


Night is the Raven, Day is the Fox

by aelinsfox



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AKA, ARFID, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, Canonical Character Death, Demisexual Neil Josten, Eating Disorders, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Food Deprivation, Fox!Jean, Fox!Kevin, Homophobic Language, I promise, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Martyr!Neil, Might be OOC, My First Work in This Fandom, Neil Josten Has A British Accent, Neil Josten Is an Idiot, Neil Josten as Nathaniel Wesninski, Not Andrew's group the Monsters, Not Beta Read, POV Multiple, Pedophilia, Rape/Non-con Elements, Raven!Jean, Raven!Kevin, Raven!Neil, Riko Moriyama is His Own Warning, Riko is a Monster, Sibling Neil Josten, Starvation, Underage Rape/Non-con, all of neil's, all spoilers, both neil and andrew, but an actual monster, but not by much, five years of college, im sorry, neil has siblings, neil suffers in this, no theyre definitely ooc, often and with no mercy, some are faster pace than other's, these tags are, we die like warriors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelinsfox/pseuds/aelinsfox
Summary: Nathaniel Wesninski is seven-years-old when he's brought to Castle Evermore to train with Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day as a business exchange by his father, Nathan Wesninski, the Butcher of Baltimore. He's eleven-years-old when Jean Moreau joins them, creating the Perfect Court. He's twelve-years-old when he makes his first deal, selling himself to the Main Branch in return for Jean and Kevin's safety in The Nest. Constantly saving others in exchange for himself--his body, mind, and freedom--so they can get out unharmed, a true martyr that Nathaniel Wesninski is.Andrew Minyard is nineteen-years-old and a freshman at Palmetto State University when he first meets the seventeen-year-old boy with icy blue eyes and auburn curls that fell in his eyes at the fall banquet.Hell's floodgates can all but collapse with all that comes after but [almost] everyone would agree that they would change nothing.
Relationships: Abby Winfield/David Wymack, Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Andrew Minyard & Original Character(s), Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Kevin Day & Jean Moreau, Kevin Day & Neil Josten, Kevin Day & Neil Josten & Jean Moreau, Matt Boyd & Neil Josten, Matt Boyd/Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten & Allison Reynolds, Neil Josten & Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten & Jean Moreau, Neil Josten & Katelyn, Neil Josten & Original Character(s), Neil Josten & The Foxes (All For The Game), Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Ichirou Moriyama, Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), The Foxes (All For The Game) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 63
Kudos: 224





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hi !! So as you could probably (hopefully) gather from the tags and summary, this is a very explicit and triggering fic. All trigger warnings for specific chapters will be in the notes before the chapter. Reader discretion is advised. Also, the timeline of the books is moved around a bit for this, but everything still happens, just in different orders / ways.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our introduction to Nathaniel and his life at the Nest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so this is my first story on ao3 and this isn't beta read so any and all mistakes are my own! 
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter include: pedophilia, rape, and mentions of Nathaniel's body which is a result of food deprivation. Please comment anymore you find that I haven't listed for this chapter, and I'll add them !!

Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Wesninski brought his mouth down and around a Russian mob’s dick slowly, his tongue exploring the veiny underside of it to the pink tip. From the death-grip in his hair, he could tell that the middle-aged Russian was enjoying this. That and the endless stream of muttered curses in Russian as well as the thrust of his hips, his manhood hitting the back of Nathaniel’s throat causing him to gag while saliva dribbled out of his mouth, falling down his chin onto the marble tiled floors. Nathaniel didn’t catch the mob’s name, he almost never does, for any of his Ichirou-issued “customers.” He doesn’t try to remember them if he does, though. It would only make forgetting about the night—about the taste on his tongue and feeling in his ass—that much harder. He always remembers faces, however. Faces, accents, tattoos, brands, and nationalities.

Sometimes Ichirou Moriyama would quiz him on who he took to his bed that night. Sometimes he remembered, sometimes he forgot, sometimes he got them mixed up with the Ravens which Riko Moriyama forced him to serve whenever they had a good game. He is a prize, a possession to be given away at a single order to whoever the highest bidder or best player was that night. Nathaniel thought he’d be okay with it, but he isn’t. He wanted nothing more than to say, “No,” whenever a bodyguard from the main branch came to his room during home games to attend to his "business" in the East Tower or to say, "No," when Riko tied him to his bedpost and let the Ravens who played the best at the game have their way with him.

He wanted nothing more than to take Kevin and Jean away from all of this and still come out of it alive. He knew any efforts, any signs of hesitation or reluctance would be him signing his own death warrant. They weren’t allowed to touch Kevin or Jean, though, no one was. Not anyone from the main branch or anyone from the side branch. Everything fell onto Nathaniel: punishments, corrections, anything and everything that Riko and Tetsuji can think of. All for two boys who are the only ones to show him any true kindness in the hell hole that is The Nest.

Nathaniel doesn't mind though, even if the Ravens "play" with him whenever possible. Or Riko carves him up with his knives and leaves him a pile of scarred bloody limbs on the cold, black ground of The Nest. Even if he isn't allowed to eat for days because someone pissed Riko off, somehow during something. Sometimes Riko would just do it for fun "just because he can."

Being an unofficial Raven never had its pros, oh no. Not for him. Never for him. During home games Nathaniel was expected to be in the East Tower and translate for Kengo Moriyama while Ichirou stood back and observed, sometimes having Nathaniel do some translation work for him. Afterward, he was always expected to stay. Always to go to the highest bidder of the night, he never went back to the Nest until the next afternoon, sore and covered in bruises. Always a way for the Moriyama's to make money off of him, to add value to him and make it harder for him to leave. Not that he'd ever try, not with Jean and Kevin so close to everything. The day after was always filled with screams and blood and sweat and grown bodies on top of his own, Riko always gave the "best" players of the game the night before rewards. Nathaniel is always the reward.

"Fuck, oh fuck just like that you lil' bitch," the Russian said in his native tongue, dragging Nathaniel out of his head and back into the present. Back into the present that he tried so hard to drift from, to leave and forget. His hips thrust into Nathaniel's mouth relentlessly, never faltering. Saliva dripping down his chin, his skin pale from spending so many years in the darkness of the Nest, never seeing sunlight. The mob member holds his head in place as his dick touches the back of Nathaniel's throat, releasing himself. Even he pulls away it takes all of Nathaniel's self-control to not spit up his semen and instead swallows it.

"You're good, Bitch. Think we can do this again at the next meeting?" The next home game wasn't for a few more weeks. Nathaniel shrugged and responded in Russian, "You'll have to ask Ichirou, sir. However, if you pay as much as you did tonight, I'm sure he'd be willing." The same answer he responded every time he's asked for a second time. The man nodded and stuffed his dick back into his dress slacks. Nathaniel took that for his dismissal and left the side room, combing his hands through his tousled auburn curls. He met Ichirou's gaze from across the tower, the nineteen-year-old gesturing for him to go to him and take his place at his right side. Ichirou ran his hands through Nathaniel's hair, tugging on a curl and making Nathaniel groan. Ichirou smiled that same smile Riko always got when he saw Nathaniel in pain, the difference between the two brothers was the dark and dangerous look that loomed in Riko's dark eyes was replaced with desire in Ichirou's.

“Did you get it?” He asked, his tone clear and cutthroat. Nathaniel nodded and dug into his pocket, he pulled out the broach that concealed information that the Russians have been hiding from the Moriyama’s--that Nathaniel had discreetly stolen during his time with his "champion"--and dropped it into Ichirou’s outreaches palm.

“Good. Go to my room, and be ready for me.”

”Yes, sir.”

Nathaniel went into another side room, Ichirou’s “room” for whenever he or Kengo were at Castle Evermore and pushed the door inward. Ichirou's room consisted of nothing more than a medium oak wood chest and a California King-sized bed in the center with four massive bedposts on each corner. 

Sighing, Nathaniel stripped as he went over to "his" side of the bed where he kneeled on the silk duvet while sitting back on his ankles, waiting for his future Lord. 

* * *

Nathaniel got back to his room the next afternoon, having had a full night of Ichirou delivered "fun". He was sore and covered in marks left by the older man. Jean was sat on his bed, working on some homework when Nathaniel opened the door. He looked up immediately and relief filled his eyes and relaxed his tense posture. 

"What do you need me to do?" Jean asked in French. Nathaniel shrugged and went into the bathroom connected to their dorm room. His icy blue eyes looked sunken with dark circles underneath, his auburn curls touseled from hands and sleep. His too pale skin from not having seen the Sun in seven years made the red and purple bruises on his neck stand out even more than they would've if this happened seven years ago; when he had his golden, skin-kissed tan.

Jean walked behind him in the doorway, his shadowed gray eyes carefully assessing him in the mirror that hung above their shared black marble vanity. His chapped lips were set in a disapproving frown, one Nate got whenever he got back from the East Tower.

"You don't need to keep doing this, Nate. Kev and I... we can take care of ourselves." Jean tried to tell him, again in French. They rarely spoke English when they were alone. 

"Right because you both did such an amazing job of 'taking care of yourselves,' that one night, Jean. I was too late then but I won't be now. Okay? They can't touch you anymore and that's all that matters." Nathaniel replied back, tired and wanting to shower off of the feeling of Ichirou and the Russian mobster from his skin.

"But what about you? You're always so busy protecting Kevin and me that you never have any fight left when it comes to protecting you. Who is protecting and watching over you? It sure as hell isn't Ichirou or Kengo or anyone else in the main branch. It's not your mother's family, certainly not your father's. It isn't Tetsuji or Riko. So who, Nate? Who is protecting you?" Jean gasped out a breathe as he finished his tangent for the hundredth time. Nathaniel looked away from his paralyzing gaze in the mirror. Jean huffed and turned around, leaving Nathaniel to take a shower he so desperately needed.

His black EAU Ravens sweatshirt embroidered with a red raven sat on the vanity when he got out, along with a pair of boxers and black sweatpants. Nathaniel felt his pale lips turn up into a rale and genuine smile at the gesture. 

"At least I don't come back from the East Tower with cuts that need stitching an--" Nathaniel's attempted joke was cut off when he opened the bathroom door and saw an angry Riko with an anxious Kevin as his ever-lasting shadow. A weary Jean sat on his bed, his gaze on the floor. Nathaniel swallowed and tried to shrink within himself. To let himself float away so that the impending pain wouldn't be felt. 

Riko smiled, his dark eyes getting the vicious gleam that he got whenever he was about to inflict pain on another. 

"Nathaniel, you're back." Nathaniel nodded, knowing that the best thing in these situations was to oblige whoever held the power at the moment. Here, it was Riko. Sometimes it was Tetsuji or Kengo or Ichirou or Nathan Wesninski. Never anyone else. No one had ever broken him but those five had come close, once. 

"Yes, King." Riko smiled at the name. He whistled and two other Ravens, the Ravens that filled Nathaniel's nightmares the most walked in. Nathaniel could just barely suppress his whimper and flinch at seeing the two Fourth-year Seniors, Evan Lopez, and Lucas Moore. 

The pair are partners and backliners, meaning they're always competing with others for their spot on the starting line-up. Always so willing to tear others down, especially Jean and Nathaniel. Jean's spot as starting backliner for next season when he was an official Raven was given to him the minute he stepped into the Nest three-years-ago. Because the pair couldn't hurt Jean, they always turned to Nathaniel. 

Evan, with his brown hair and dark brown eyes, looked at Nathaniel with obvious hunger that made even Riko slink back, Nathaniel flinched. Hard. Lucas smiled, his blue eyes twinkling purple in the red lights overhead. 

"Yes, well, Lopez, Moore, your prize. As promised. Come with us, Jean. You could use extra practice for next season." Jean stood up and walked over to Kevin's side, his gray eyes full of anger as he glared at the two backliners. Kevin subtly rested a hand on top of Jean's, rubbing over his pulse. Jean visibly relaxed and the anger in his eyes dimmed, softening into concern. Nathaniel nodded at him, a gesture of reassurance that he'd be okay, that he'd live to see them again. 

The other three members of the Perfect Court left, and Lopez and Moore moved in, back Nathaniel up against the bathroom vanity. 

Lopez spoke first, "Relax, little one. We'll be gentle." Nathaniel looked at them blankly, he knew their games and their lies. This was just another one of them. Moore laughed and wrapped his arms around Nathaniel's thighs, picking him up and bringing him to Nathaniel's bed, the bed closest to the bathroom. He was pushed down, his arms held above his head by Lopex while Moore trailed his lips down Nathaniel's skin. He ripped his sweatshirt off and Nathaniel yelped. They both caught sight of the hickeys and bite marks that Ichirou had left behind the night before and scowled, as partners like they did everything else. 

"You can't just settle and be the Ravens' Whore, can you, Nathaniel?" Moore scuffed from Nathaniel's waist where he straddled his waist. Nathaniel tried to push him off, but he wasn't strong enough. He never was. "Please, please stop." Nathaniel pleaded until his voice was raw and empty and broken. From screaming to begging, he didn't know. He supposed it was a mix of both. The pain in his muscles multiplied afterward, as Lucas and Evan left his room, left him in a pile of his own blood on his bed, trembling. As always Jean came back in looking concerned and weary. Nathaniel nodded and Jean picked him up, his small body nothing more than bones and flesh. He was gingerly sat down on the shower floor as Jean turned the shower on and washed Nathaniel off. As he rinsed off the feeling of muscular hands keeping his boney figure down, and as the watercolored red it hit his body and went down the drain, Jean murmured words of comfort in French as he softly caressed Nathaniel's hair.

Nathaniel felt his eyelids grow heavy as he closed them and leaned his head against his partner's shoulder, a constant weight that was always there when Nathaniel needed him most. That was all he could ask for in return. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall banquet the year before Nathaniel starts as an official Raven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the support on the last chapter, I'm so overwhelmed by it but in the best way possible. I'll try and update this story at least three times a week but sometimes my schedule doesn't let me. So, apologies in advance. 
> 
> This chapter takes place over three years in the future from Chapter One, making it Jean, Kevin, and Riko's sophomore year, Andrew's freshman year, and Nathaniel's senior year of high school!
> 
>   
> Trigger Warnings for this chapter: violence, death , murder , food and unhealthy eating habits. Let me know in the comments if I missed any!!

"Oh come on, Andrew. This is our first banquet. Could you at least _try_ not to stab someone?" Nicky asked as Andrew put his knives that Renee gave him in his armbands. He gave Nicky a blank stare and then smiled his drugged smile.

"I could try... I just prefer _not_ to," Andrew deadpanned, his manic grin still plastered on his face.

Nicky groaned, "You're unbelievable." Andrew rolled his eyes as Aaron came out of the bathroom in their dorm and sent the pair an annoyed glare. He looked as if he was about to say something but a knock at the door stopped him. Aaron was already half-way across the living room before Andrew could even look at the door. Someone was acting rather strange, weren't they? 

"Did someone invite a certain cheerleader even after renewing the promise?" Andrew had noticed Aaron's glances at the sidelines at the games they'd already had this year. How the glances always landed on one cheerleader in particular. Aaron turned and glared at his twin, "Leave Katelyn out of this. She's going as my friend. Which she is." Andrew rolled his eyes. 

"Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. If I found out she's anything more and you broke your promise, she's dead." Aaron glared at him even stronger and Andrew reached for his knives. Nicky opened the door and a blonde girl came in, smiling dressed in a maroon dress that went cut half-way down her thighs. She smiled at his twin who gave her a small smile in return, and Andrew was pretty sure he was going to be sick. "Let's go meet everyone at the bus," Nicky said, ever the damage control. At least he had enough survival instincts to be the first one out of the dorm. 

Andrew didn't understand the need to go to these dumb banquets but they were mandatory, so, he went. 

* * *

Nathaniel felt his stitches tear as he took off his sweat-soaked Ravens' uniform. He winced and rubbed at the cuts on his torso. Jean noticed from beside him and whispered in French, "Hurry up in the showers so I can stitch you back together before I have to leave for the banquet." Nathaniel nodded and jogged to the showers, despite his sore muscles screaming in protest. 

As he was getting back into the post-training gear that he usually wore whenever the Ravens went to the banquet, Riko--of course, Riko. Always "King" Riko Moriyama--stopped him. And threw him a black button-down dress shirt, black dress slacks, and a red tie; the Ravens' uniform for this years' fall banquet. 

"You're coming with us, this year. It's time to start _introducing_ you into the **outside world**." He said introducing it like it was poison. "I- I've never-" "Yes, yes, you haven't been outside in ten years blah blah blah. I don't care. You're coming or my Uncle will hear of this." Nathaniel swallowed at the obvious threat. He nodded and got into his clothes for the banquet while praying that it wouldn't be a complete and utter disaster. 

* * *

Andrew was bored. The green and silver of the Belmonte Terrapins mixed with the brown and orange and red of fall made his head hurt. He wanted to leave and go to Colombia instead but of course, he couldn't. The Palmetto State Foxes stood in the main entrance while the Terrapins captain welcomed all the teams. 

"Welcome Foxes! Captain Wilds, it's nice to meet you, off of the court," the Terrapins captain welcomed, the false enthusiasm and happiness evident in his tone. If Dan noticed it, she didn't say anything. She only smiled sweetly while shaking his hand and responded, "Likewise. Thank you for welcoming us to your... humble court." The Terrapins captain fakely smiled and nodded. "You're seated with the Ravens, have fun." 

The Edgar Allan Ravens were a cult. There was no other word to describe them. All the male Ravens were dressed in black clothes with a red tie while the two girls on the team wore black dresses with red accessories. Riko Moriyama sat in the center of the table, in between an auburn-haired boy with icy blue eyes and Kevin Day. Day's green emerald green eyes were fierce as he gazed at the nearing Foxes. Andrew couldn't help but feel annoyed at how Riko's dark eyes gleamed with malice as he followed Kevin's sight. The auburn-haired boy appeared to shrink back at the sight of the Foxes, _strange_. 

As the Foxes took their seats, Moriyama stood up and greeted them with a smile that could only promise two things: danger and pain. "Such a pity that they placed you with us, the **last** ranked team with the **first** ranked team." The Ravens laughed, Jean Moreau spoke up for the first time. "Maybe they were placed with us so they can be taught how to play properly." The Ravens laughed again. All except for the blue-eyed boy. 

"Are we going to spend the entire evening being mean to each other, or can we actually have a civil conversation like the adults we are?" Renee asked, always the good Christan girl. 

"Nothing with the Ravens is ever civil. Even the most common of fools know that." A deep voice said, thick with a British accent. It was the blue-eyed boy who was the only one who didn't laugh when they were talking shit about the Foxes. By then all the Foxes had taken their seats, the numbers--stupidly--lining up with those on the other side. Andrew was sat across the auburn-haired boy and was just now able to see the '3' tattooed on his left cheek. 

Before he could say anything Nicky--of course--talked. "Was that an insult or advice? It was probably both... anyway that doesn't really matter. I'm Nicky." He reached his hand out to the redhead who visibly flinched and shrunk back, Moreau and Day both glared at his cousin. Nicky frowned but didn't pull his hand away. Andrew pushed Nicky's hand down, the guy clearly wasn't a fan of touching. "Why'd you do that? I think I was making headway!" Nicky complained in German, Andrew gave him a blank look. "The kid clearly doesn't like being touched. Leave it." 

"Who are you calling 'kid,' I'm not that much younger than you. Only a year." The redhead said in German. Nicky froze and Aaron made a noise of surprise but Andrew just looked at the kid-not-kid blankly. "And you're right. I don't like being touched so tell your... touchy-feely friends to fuck off."

Riko snapped from beside the redhead, "English, Nathaniel." 

Nathaniel rolled his eyes and said in German, "He doesn't like others speaking languages he can't understand. He's insecure like that." Riko's rage radiated off of him and Kevin said something in quick Japanese. Nathaniel flinched back in his seat, his icy blue eyes once ablaze with a rebellious fire, now filled with _nothing._ They were dull and lifeless. 

Jean whispered something to Kevin and he nodded. "Nate, Can you get us all some drinks? The team's usual." He looked to the Foxes, "Do any of you want anything? Alcoholic? Non-alcoholic? Nate can get it."

"We're a bunch of minors. And Nathaniel is how old?" Allison asked though she looked hopeful for some alcohol. 

"I'm seventeen," Nathaniel replied. The Foxes--save for Andrew and his brother and cousin--looked shocked. 

"How are _you_ going to get _us_ alcoholic drinks? Do they even have that shit here?" Matt asked. Dan elbowed him in the side. 

"I have my ways, which are not to be questioned. Now, do you all want anything or not?" 

* * *

Nathaniel unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt and pulled down one side of the collar to show the "bartender"--if you could even call him that--Nathaniel's brand. The black-and-white Japenese Sea snake wrapped around a six-pointed star is the sign of the Moriyama's Main Branch. All the faculty at tonight's banquet are members--of some rank--in the Main Branch. The bartender looked at the brand and back up at Nathaniel. Recognition ran in his eyes and he got what he needed. Eight "waiters" followed him back to the table with the drinks and Nathaniel rolled his eyes as the Ravens got out of their seats and took their drinks. 

Andrew Minyard looked at him as he buttoned his dress shirt back up. His eyes looked down at his upper torso through his shirt, Nathaniel snapped his fingers near his head, bringing Andrew's attention to it. "My eyes up here, though, if you want to see more I'll be more than willing in Never years."

The Ravens snickered at the Foxes' expressions and Nathaniel could do nothing but smirk at the blush that crept on Andrew Minyard's face. 

As he sat down and took a sip of his drink, one of Kengo's lackeys came up behind him. "Wesninski," he called out. Nathaniel looked over his shoulder and sighed, from next to him, Riko glared bullets and knives and promises of pain. "Can he not wait any longer? Dinner is almost here," Nathaniel stated.

The lackey replied, "He's waited long enough. And **he** isn't here tonight so you'll be back either before or during dinner."

Nathaniel sighed again then nodded and tugged his hand closer to his body when RIko tried to grab it. 

"I have work to do, goodbye."

He followed Kengo's lackey up a secret set of stairs in the Terrapins stadium to an empty room that is sometimes used as meeting halls. 

"Why isn't Ichirou here? He'd be here, unless--" He drifted off, too horrified of what it would be. 

"Unless a shift of power was coming, yes. Kengo's health--his livers, to be exact--are beginning to fail him. Soon, I predict within the next six months-to-ten months, Ichirou will become Lord Moriyama."

Nathaniel swallowed trying to imagine how bad Riko's rage will be then. The only thing he's ever wanted in life was his father's recognition and if Kengo dies before Riko gets that... his rage would be unprecedented. All Nathaniel thought about at that moment was Kevin and Jean and how they'd survive the rage. The shift of power would mean the Moriyama's would be weakened--very temporarily--and they might be unable to protect them then. The thought of them being hurt made him nauseous.

"If you want your, protectees to be protected, I'd advise you get them out of The Nest as soon as possible," Kengo's lackey said and Nathaniel nodded. 

Kengo Moriyama was waiting for him when they got to the room-turned-meeting hall. Nathaniel bowed to his lord and put his earlier conversation out of his mind. 

"My Lord," he greeted in Japanese, "You called for me."

Kengo nodded, "Yes. There is this... problem in my hierarchy. Someone thought they could overthrow my heir and me. Since they were clearly wrong, they must pay."

Nathaniel nodded. He knew the price for trying to kill the Lord or his Heir was death, He was death's deliverer, apparently. 

"How should I make them pay, my Lord? If you'll allow it, I must return to the banquet when I'm finished here. I can't exactly show back up covered in blood."

"That is why it will be something simple. Painful and slow, but simple. No mess. I assume you remember your lesson on different poisons." Nathaniel nodded, he remembered the lesson well. "Good, get ricin and put in a cup of whiskey. We'll act as if its an unfortunate incident." _Which it isn't_ are the unspoken words. 

He got the ricin grains from a cabinet after everyone put a gas mask--as to not be exposed to it and risk ricin poisoning-- and took a glass, filling it half-way with whiskey.

When the **guests** joined them, Nathaniel handed the glass to them. Their eyes and nose began to bleed, and they started choking on their own blood. After they both stopped fidgeting and convulsing and moving, Kengo had some of his bodyguards rid of the bodies in a room, where they would later take to an abandoned house and burn. Nathaniel left after that. 

As he walked back to the banquet where dinner had no-doubt already begun--the thought of eating in front of others made in nauseous--he couldn't help but think of a plan to get Kevin and Jean out of The Nest. 

* * *

Andrew looked up from his penne ala vodka when Nathaniel Wesninski walked back on to the court. The Ravens and Foxes had traded nothing more than petty insults at each other for the last thirty minutes. He had the feeling that insults--or questions--would again be exchanged between the groups when Nathaniel sat on Riko's left side once more. 

Nathaniel looked at his plate in front of him, fruit salad, he remembered Day ordering for him and grimaced. How interesting. 

Jean murmured something in French from Riko's far-right side and Nathaniel said something back in the same tongue. Moriyama's jaw was clenched in fury at not being able to understand the language. The thought of Riko Moriyama, King, and Heir of Exy, being told 'No' amused Andrew to no end, and he manically smirked over his fork. 

Of course, it was a Raven, Ava Jenkins, who started the whole ordeal. 

"Get enough time with your Whore Master, Nathaniel? You're back so soon, I can't imagine it," She sneered and taunted. 

Nathaniel sighed like he was used to his. He sneered back, "Jealous? I know Riko is, be getting all his daddy's and brother's attention and all." His British accent was thick and heavy. His blue eyes glistened with rebellion, his smirk sharp. 

Andrew isn't sure if he'd rather have Nathaniel with or against him in a fight, but he's starting to think he'd prefer him to be _on_ his team rather than off. 

"It's not polite to call others a whore," Renee replied all too sweetly.

"Ravens don't do polite, Fox," another Raven, John Engle said.

"Maybe they should start."

Didn't sweet yet vicious Renee Walker see that this was going to get her nowhere? 

"Besides, it's the truth. Thought you Foxes liked that shit, given your captain."

Matt's jaw clenched tightly while Dan just smiled. 

"Prostitutes and strippers aren't the same things. I'd hoped you be able to differentiate the two professions."

Nathaniel looked up from his plate where he hadn't eaten anything, just silently forked around the fruit. He said something in Japanese to RIko to which the brat replied something--again in Japanese--sharply and Nathaniel flinched harshly, Day and Moreau shot Riko death glares behind his back.

Oh, aren't these little birds the most interesting things.

"I'm bored," Andrew declared. 

He got a glare in return from RIko for interrupting. Good. He also got grateful looks from Wesninski, Day, and Moreau. Disgusting.

"I do not like being interrupted, Minyard."

"And I do not like being bored, Moriyama."

"Both of you, shut the fuck up," a familiar dark and rough voice said from behind Andrew.

It was Coach David Wymack. 

"You have no right to speak to me in such a manner," Riko snapped at Coach. 

Coach gave him an even look. Nathaniel seemed to shrink back from the older man while saying something in French to which Kevin paled and Jean grinned. He nudged Kevin in the side only to be swatted away by the green-eyed man.

"He's your elder Riko and a coach. I do believe he has the right to speak to you in such a manner," Nathaniel said. Back to his defiant phase, the mood swingy bitch.

" _You_ do not have the right to speak to me in such a manner, _**T**_ ** _hree_** **.** I am King, I am One. _I_ outrank _you_." 

Nathaniel smiled--can you even call it that? It was a crooked smile and one that promised shit was about to go to flames.

"Who is in your father's inner circle? I know it's not you, Riko."

Whatever the fuck that meant, it made RIko livid. He grabbed Nathaniel by the wrist and stood up with him, taking them both to the Away lockerroom. Some of the chaperones that were around the tables on the outskirts of the court, followed them. 

"Shit," Kevin Day and Jean Moreau said, one in sync with the other. They gave each other wary looks before getting up and following the two other birdies. 

Little birds are the most ~~interesting~~ annoying creatures in existence, Andrew decided as everyone went back to eating their food.

Unfortunately, the four birdies didn't return for the rest of the banquet.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The week after the banquet. Game day, Ravens-Hornets, Foxes-Jackals !!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the support, it's honestly beyond flattering. I'm really excited for y'all to see everything I have planned for this series as it's a bunch of my favorite tropes into one (oops, haha) so it's destined to get a bit chaotic. 
> 
> My Twitter is aelinsfox if you're interested in messaging me there and/or just checking out my page lol.  
> \  
> \  
> Trigger Warnings for this chapter include:  
> blood, torture (knives/waterboarding), violence, pedophilia, rape, and mentions of death. 
> 
> (Not in that order so be careful while reading)! As always, please let me know in the comments if I left some triggers out.

Nathaniel couldn’t feel anything as he swayed on his feet on the Ravens’ court during practice. It was the Friday after the banquet and the Ravens had a home game that night. He’d be in the East Tower with Ichirou and Kengo and every other member of the Main Branch as well as German and Canadian gangs, working out deals and trades and what-not. His cuts from after the banquet the week prior still hadn’t healed completely, and he knew Ichirou would ask about them later. He had to ask Kengo and Ichirou about the plan that he’d come up with to get Kevin and Jean out of The Nest. He still needed to consult them, and the other people involved who have no idea about the plan yet.

Riko bristled past Nathaniel with ease and Nathaniel winced at the pain it caused his shoulder. The goal lit up red behind Sarah, the junior goalkeeper. Riko turned and glared but his posture was slanted as Nathaniel's eyes stung with blood and his vision blurred. He could vaguely make out Jean's blurry silhouette coming towards him as he walked towards Nathaniel's collapsed figure. 

Riko got to him first and picked him up by the back of his collar, Nathaniel's neck guard choking him.

"I don't recall allowing you to rest, Nathaniel. Get back up and **focus,** " Riko spat.

"When you're forced to- to play two positions with no-no breaks, it's rather- rather difficult," Nathaniel choked out. 

Well, that and only two meals a week as well as only three hours of sleep a night. How he hasn't dropped dead yet surprises himself. 

Riko snarled in digust. 

How he expected this not to happen is beyond Nathaniel's knowledge. Or maybe he did and that's why when he found out that Kevin was secretly training Nathaniel as a striker when he was thirteen, he told Nathaniel to take up both positions during practice and in the future, games.

A backliner in the first and third quarters and a striker in the second and fourth quarters. The thought was completely laughable because Nathaniel's only break is half-time and even then he's not going to be allowed to sit on the bench in the locker room and drink water but to stand and to look at everyone else drinking water and electrolyte water just to torture him. 

Kevin nearly fainted when he found out. Nathaniel would've laughed at his expression all those years ago if his childhood laughter wasn't beat out of him by Riko at eight-years-old after a particularly loud laughter battle with eleven-year-old Kevin.

Riko was about to punch him when Tetsuji called an end to the first scrimmage and ordered subs in. The starting lineup for tonight was called out to play.

"Moriyama, Day, Moreau, Fuller, Barns, and Lewis are the lineup for tonight, get back on the court. Moriyama, let Wesninski go." His voice possessed that rare power that left no room for argument. But as always, Riko found some way in to argue. 

Bastard. 

"But Uncle-"

" _Now_. You've hurt him enough, he needs to rest for tonight. You'll have him back tomorrow."

Tetsuji never lets Riko hurt him more than necessary on Friday's but it's never because he could be too injured to play. No, never that. It's because he needs to not look like a broken bird when he goes before the Lord and his Heir. 

Riko dropped Nathaniel on the court where he gasped for air before mustering enough strength to walk to the bench. He sat with a wince and drank some--rarely given, to **him** \--water. The clear liquid was cold and clean--as far as Nathaniel could tell, from all his experiences with date rape drugs--as it slid down his throat. He leaned back against one of the bleachers behind him and drew his legs to his chest before wrapping his arms around them. He was more than content to watch the pre-game scrimmage currently happening in front of him as he tried not to imagine how bad tonight's conversation with the Lord and his Heir could go.

* * *

Andrew leaned against his heavy goalkeeper racket, bored out of his mind as he watched Seth and Dwayne pass the ball and run up the court towards him. Juan and Reggie stood out behind the plexiglass, a few feet away from Aaron and Nicky who were talking in German. 

The Breckenridge Jackals would be traveling to the Foxhole Court that night and Andrew couldn't be more annoyed at the fact. The Jackals and Foxes have long-sense been rivals though it doesn't make sense seeing as the Foxes are the worst team in Class I NCAA Exy and the Edgar Allan Ravens are in the Southeastern District so you'd think the two best teams would be rivals but no. 

Life can never be simple, though, can it?

The goal behind Andrew lit up red and he turned his head to look at it. 

"Goddammit Andrew. We have a game tonight against Breckenridge. Put some actual effort into something for once!" Damien yelled at him. 

Aaron replied, "The more you tell him to do something the less likely he is to do it."

Andrew smiled manically at his twin, "I feel so fulfilled when someone finally understands." 

Aaron rolled his eyes and Nicky huffed out a light laugh.

"Andrew, can you try for tonight? We need to not make complete jokes of ourselves, we play the Ravens next week at Castle Evermore and I will **not** be made a fool of," Dan said from across the court. 

Andrew gave Dan a two-fingered salute. "Captain, yes, Captain."

Dan sighed and moved on with practice while Andrew thought of all the ways to not have to play that night's game and coming up blank.

* * *

A young Japanese man came and got Nathaniel from his room shortly before the game between the Ravens and began and led him to the East Tower.

Nathaniel was dressed in a freshly presses and tailored black suit with matching dress slacks. His black dress shoes shined in the dim, red lights of the hallway leading to the lower. 

"Jean Moreau's father is here tonight, boy. You best behave yourself to your utmost potential. It would do us no good at all for you to... to disrespect someone of such a high stature in the French mob, do you understand?"

Nathaniel's blood ran cold as ice in his veins. He wanted to walk right into that room, steal one of the many guns or knives within the vicinity and destroy Jean's father. But he knew it wouldn't end well so he nodded and spoke in Japanese. 

"I understand."

"Good."

There were Ichirou and Kengo in the front of the tower, overlooking the court as seas of black and red flowed into the stadium. 

"Lord and Heir Moriyama," the young man from before greeted in Japanese greeted before he and Nathaniel both bowed low. Ichirou was the first to turn around, and Kengo followed his son but Nathaniel noted how he was slower than usual. 

"Rise." The two men rose.

Ichirou walked over to Nathaniel and grasped his chin in his palm, holding on tightly so Nathaniel would have no choice but to submit. 

~~He would submit anyway.~~

"You're hurt. What happened?"

"I spoke out of line at the fall banquet, my Lord. It was my fault."

Ichirou assessed him with his cold and dark eyes but merely nodded and walked back to stand at his father's side.

As the buzzer rang from the court, men in pressed and tailored black and white suits entered and stood around the room. As Ichirou took off and Nathaniel stood by his side, he could feel a subtle tension in the Moriyama Heir that he didn't like. He only understood the source of this tension when Ichirou walked up to a tall white man with jet black hair and pale green eyes. 

"Heir Moriyama," the mysterious man greeted.

"Marc Moreau," Ichirou said evenly. Nathaniel's body tensed and burned with icy cold rage. 

"May I ask why you bring a- a child to a meeting as important as this?" His accent was thick and heavy, like Jean's when he first came to the Nest all those years ago. Ichirou cast a side-eyed look at Nathaniel and nodded briefly. 

"I am no child, sir. I am Heir Ichirou's best translator and future Edgar Allan Raven. I can assure you, I am well certified to be dealing with tonight's meeting."

Marc gave him an assessing look that was nowhere close to subtle.

"How old are you?"

The question made him tense before he replied, "I'm seventeen and will turn eighteen in January." Something that Nathaniel was well acquainted with flashed in Jean's father's green eyes. Desire. Lust. The thought made Nathaniel thickly swallow the bile that threatened to rise in his throat.

"I hear you take money for him," the statement was directed to Ichirou, but blank rage settled in the Heir's eyes. Something Nathaniel had only ever seen when he talked about Riko and how poorly he was behaving in the Nest.

"I do. However, seeing as Nathaniel is my best translator, I will need him for tonight. He must be back in his dorm in the Nest shortly after the game is over. My sincerest apologies, Mister Moreau. Perhaps a later date." Marc nodded though his eyes silently screamed in raging emerald fires throughout green French grasslands, as Ichirou and Nathaniel walked away and Nathaniel began translating in French and German and as he tried not to process too much about what he was saying in either language.

It's hard to ignore the longing looks of desire that the majority of older men shoot Nathaniel as he stands at Ichirou's side, translating and bowing and smiling politely, but somehow I manage to swallow the rising vomit in his throat and thinks about the Exy game which he can vaguely hear being played through the glass windows of the East Tower. He thinks about the two Ravens who he trusts with his life, of his brothers. Of Perfect Court members two and four who's safety depends on Nathaniel completing his job as whatever Ichirou and Kengo need him to be. 

Even if it means being labeled the Ravens' Whore at fifteen because someone saw some-too-many hickeys that lined his neck and torso. He'd do anything to keep his brothers, his family, safe. If he couldn't have kept his younger siblings safe, then this is the least he can do. In their memory.

* * *

"Focus, dammit! They're creaming us out there and- and we need to actually give a fuck."

Dan nodded, "Coach is right. We're not focused and we're not trying to our utmost potential."

Dwayne rolled his eyes, as he did every time Dan played Captain. 

Andrew's head was spinning and he was going to have to take his pill soon. As if Nicky, the asshole, could read his mind he handed Andrew his pill and a bottle of water which Andrew took without protest or complaint. Soon everything became blurred as he crashed for the rest of half-time and spent the rest of the game on the bench, watching Renee and Reggie ~~fail~~ to attempt to keep out as many goals as possible. 

How devastating it was when the Jackals won 36-2.

* * *

The Ravens won 65-3 and still, Riko was in a horrible mood the following day when Nathaniel made his way to his dorm to see him and Kevin standing outside. He internally rolled his eyes.

"Nathaniel. Follow me."

Nathaniel locked eyes with Kevin who shrugged and made to follow before Riko stopped him. 

"Stay here and keep Jean company."

Kevin and Nathaniel traded weary looks. If Kevin had to stay behind then nothing good could be coming out of what was coming. 

"I'll be okay, Kev." He said in French. Kevin nodded and opened his and Jean's door before slipping inside. RIko pushed Nathaniel up against the wall with a thud that vibrated through the walls of the Red Hall.

"What'd you say to him?" He sneered.

Nathanial replied, "I told him how much I'm looking forward to whatever you have planned for me, king." Riko--dumbass Riko--took it for what it was and dragged Nathaniel through the hall to the locker rooms where Benjamin Saunders, a sophomore striker, and Justin Miller, a junior defensive dealer, were waiting for them. 

Riko flashed his pocket knife out of his back pocket and ripped Nathaniel's shirt open. The knife ripped down his torso, bleeding red from the cut. He moved to assess how deep it was but Riko was dragging to the shower before he could. 

His cut shirt was tied around his head before he could say anything. His joggers and boxers were quickly stripped from him and he could feel hands over him as the sound of a running shower got closer. 

He quickly realized what Riko was about to do to him. He'd had it done only twice before, both during training to torture people who wronged the Main Branch. Ichirou told him he had to "know what he was putting others through." Sometimes Nathaniel still had nightmares about it.

How the water ran through the cotton of the bag that was over his head, how he sputtered and gasped and the burning in his lungs only grew with each gasp he let out for air. 

Nathaniel started fighting as best he could, but with his strength quickly waning from practice yesterday and his time with Ichirou last night and earlier that morning, he quickly lost the fight. 

"King- Riko, **please**. Don't- don't do this Riko."

"Shut up."

He felt the sting of the knife again as it went across his abdomen horizontally. The warm blood trickled from his wound and Nathaniel could feel the sting of salty tears begin to start behind his icy blue irises.

He was pushed under the water and Nathaniel gasped for air. There was a puddle gathering on the floor which he knows he was pushed down on because he felt the cold black tile against his front while large hands worked his lower cheeks apart. 

He could briefly remember screaming but that only welcomed more burning water in his lungs. He spurted and gasped and screamed while unwelcome and older hands held him down, touched him, _went inside him,_ making him bleed and scream and cry more from the pain of forced penetration with nothing to lubricate it. 

Nathaniel doesn't know how long he was held there for, or when--or if-- he passed out, but all he knows is that he came back into his head when he was back in his dorm with his brothers. 

Jean was huddled close to his side, a cup of warm jasmine tea in his hands which he graciously handed to Nathaniel when he noticed he was conscious again. Kevin paced back and forth at the foot of Nathaniel's bed and only looked up, relief and concern mixed into one. 

Before either of them could say anything though, Nathaniel spoke.

''You're both getting out of the Nest."

Kevin and Jean both froze. The latter looking at Nathaniel with wonder in his pale gray eyes while the former looked frozen in fear. 

"What?" Jean asked in quiet French.

"You're both getting out of the Nest. I talked to both Kengo and Ichirou last night, you both have their blessing. It's going to take some time to plan everything out to the exact moment but Riko nor Tetsuji will be able to do anything about it when it happens."

That seemed to get Kevin out of his frozen state and back to pacing. 

"How? When? _**Why?**_ "

"You'll drive--either one of Ichirou's men will take you, or you'll take a bus--to Palmetto State. We'll be able to pass it off as Kevin wanting to go and try and build the worst team in Class I Exy into something great and Jean as not wanting to let his friend go alone. I'm planning this for the Christmas banquet when we'll be in Virginia. It'll be easy to create a distraction where the two of you can slip onto the Foxes' bus and make it back to Palmetto before anyone is none the wiser. Why... well Kengo's health is rapidly decreasing and Ichirou is planning to take over the rule gradually over the course of the next year. I fear that when Kengo dies, Riko's anger will be too great where even I can't protect the two of you."

"And you?"

"What about you?"

"I'll come to Palmetto after Ichirou has taken power, so I have to wait for Kengo to die first."

"Nate-" Kevin tried but Nathaniel cut him off.

"No. I've made up my mind. I don't know what I'd do if either of you were hurt and I couldn't have protected you."

"Who will protect you from Riko's wrath when Kengo dies?"

Nathaniel humorlessly chuckled, "Me, myself, and I."

Neither of the older Ravens looked very convinced, especially given the last statement but they both nodded nonetheless. Nathaniel nodded in approval and thought about how to tell Jean about his father.

"I met your father last night, by the way. Disgusting human being he is."

The initial shock both men went through quickly washed away into humor as Jean chuckled lightly. 

"What'd he do?"

"Not much... just asked Ichirou to let me have a room with him. But only after I told him I was still seventeen." Jean's jaw clenched and Kevin's eyes sharpened in rare anger. "He didn't let me, though." That didn't seem to help either men's fury so Nathaniel decided to change the topic back to Exy which was easy with his two brothers. 

Though while Nathaniel talked with his brothers, he couldn't help his mind drifting back to his own siblings and how he failed them.

How he promised to protect them both, only for his mother to have taken them away from him, and with that his broken promise as his father sent him their death certificates when he was ten. He couldn't help but doubt himself and his plan and that it wouldn't work and his brothers would be hurt because of his stupidity.

* * *

Natalie Ava-May Hatford passed the ball back to her younger brother, Nicholas Andras Hatford in the backyard of their Los Angeles home. Her brother's gray eyes shone brightly in the humidity that is a California autumn while their uncle Stuart was in the house making tea or something.

Nicholas caught the ball and went running down to the other end, just to shoot it into an empty goal which was really just two beach umbrellas stuck in the grass.

"Nat, Do you think Nate is really dead?" 

Her gray eyes locked with her younger brother's as she thought about her older twin brother. She smiled sadly. 

"I have no idea, Nick. Though I'm sure if he was, we would've heard of or from him by now. Especially since we're in the States."

She hated squashing that tiny hope deep inside her heart that the death certificate that their father had sent their uncle when she was ten-years-old was fake. She hated how she had lived in London for five years at that point and hadn't seen her twin since her mother upped her and Nick in the middle of the night and took a plane to London where they lived with her family, the British mob.

The thought of her twin, his auburn curls and bright blue eyes that had turned dull and lifeless a year prior, broke something in her. A single tear rolled down her cheek. 

"I miss him, Nick."

"Me too, Nat. Me too."

Natalie decided then, in that moment, that she'd do whatever it takes to find her twin. If only for her and Nicholas to have closure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, the Ravens-Foxes game and the winter/Christmas banquet.
> 
> I'm sorry, Nate goes through so much trauma in his life but he'll heal.... eventually. He just needs the right people around him to help him through it.
> 
> Also that ending?? I'm not sure how to feel about it, tbh so thoughts or predictions on what's going to happen?


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foxes-Ravens game, the Christmas banquet, and the few weeks following (winter break, kinda).
> 
> Also, Bee is introduced... finally!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited and anxious and nervous about this chapter. A lot happens and I mean A LOT. Be prepared!
> 
> This is such a long chapter, gods above. Anyway, hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Trigger Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> violence, homophobic language (it's not entirely in there like it gets cut off but it's still implied), rape, food deprivation, knives, and blood.

"And why do you think you're feeling like this?" 

"If I thought I knew why I'm feeling like this, I wouldn't be here, would I, Bee?"

Bee sighed and set down her mug full of dark hot chocolate and six mini marshmallows. "Maybe you think you know but just don't want to acknowledge it? Sometimes when we think about someone a lot-"

"I don't feel, so don't go near that bullshit."

Another sigh, "Andrew."

"No, Bee." Andrew's tone was final and left no room for argument so Bee just nodded and moved on... to Exy. Deplorable. 

"Are you excited for the game against the Ravens on Friday? Their captain seems... confident that they'll beat you." Andrew knew they would. They were the Palmetto State Foxes, the worst Class I Exy team, and they were the Edgar Allan Ravens, the best NCAA Exy team in the nation. **Of course,** they were going to lose. 

Andrew stared at her blankly. "How are Aaron and Nicky, then? You haven't talked about them yet."

Andrew sighed and started talking about how his traitorous twin has been sneaking out for "study sessions" at the library with one of the Vixens as if Andrew couldn't see the looks the two idiots gave each other from across the court or didn't notice when he smiled at his phone _too_ much. Nicky had taken to complaining too much about Erik and how he missed him. Disgusting, on both accounts.

When the timer that counted their hour went off, Andrew quickly got up off the couch and gave Bee a two-fingered salute which she only replied with a nod of acknowledgment before he was outside waiting for Nicky, the asshole, to pick him up.

* * *

"I want you to watch tonight's game, Nathaniel. From up here, but watch. Watch and see just what you're sending Kevin Day and Jean Moreau into at the Christmas banquet in a few short weeks."

Ichirou and Nathaniel were in the East Tower, once again overlooking the sea of black and red with spots of orange and white drift into Castle Evermore where in just a few short hours, the Edgar Allan Ravens would--figuratively--slaughter the Palmetto State Foxes. 

"Of course, my Lord. Anything else?"

"I also want you to escort them from the parking lot to the Away locker room. On the way, you are to tell Coach David Wymack about the plan. Understood?"

"Understood, my Lord."

"Good. Now go, they'll be here shortly."

Nathaniel nodded and, after bowing respectfully, left the East Tower to go to the entrance that went out to the parking lot in which the Away team would travel in to with their team buses. Sho Saki, one of Ichirou's men, showed Nathaniel the way sense he personally had no idea where he was going other than outside. 

When they got outside, Saki gave him a bottle of bourbon to drink while he waited before telling him the code and getting back inside. Not long after, the bottle was only an eighth of the way empty, a bright orange bus with white trimming and paw prints pulled up in front of him.

Nathaniel thought that the bus was nauseatingly bright and could be seen from space if the Sun caught on to the bus _just_ right. 

A woman around her late thirty's came out first, carrying a white bin with a red cross. Abigail Winfield, the team nurse, then. 

"Oh! Hello, we were expecting a security guard." Her voice was soft and sweet, like honey laced warm milk.

"They're all busy with the fans. I'm your next safest best... probably." Nathaniel probably should've brought his knives but he figured his brand would do.

The nurse smiled and began ushering the Foxes off of the bus, and while some went to the back of the bus to get out their gear, some stayed in front of Nathaniel. 

"Is that everyone?" Nathaniel asked as David Wymack who was probably driving the bus, walked in front of him after parking the bus. David nodded so Nathaniel continued, after taking a sip of alcohol.

"All drugs and alcohol must stay outside the Nest. I'm looking at you, Druggies," he said pointing to who he assumed were the fourth-year seniors who were graduating that year. One of them scoffed. 

"And just what makes you think we have drugs?"

"I can smell it on you from here, asshole. Hand them over," he stuck his hand out and the five seniors sighed and dug in their pockets and pulled out varying drugs. Mostly weed but there was a bit of heroin and cocaine in the mix. Nathaniel whistled, bemused. 

"Hard stuff."

The guy from before rolled his eyes. 

"Dan Wilds, Captain of the Foxes," she said while she outstretched her hand. After Nathaniel walked over to the drug dumpster by the door, he walked up to her and considered her hand. After a brief mental debate, he accepted it and shook her hand.

"Nathaniel Wesninski. Future Raven."

"Damn him for being seventeen," he heard one of the Foxes say in Spanish. He looked over to the sound and saw Nicholas Hemmick, talking to one of the twins, Aaron Minyard if the bored look on his face was anything to go by. 

"Damn you for looking at a minor," Nathaniel replied in the same tongue. The backliner looked at him, shame and shock covering his features. 

"At least you have the decency to look ashamed. Now let's go, I don't have forever and I need to talk to you, Coach while your players get ready."

The Foxes' coach looked confused but nodded nonetheless and while Nathaniel entered the code that Saki had told him earlier before leading them into the endless darkness that is the Nest, one of the backliners, Matt Boyd, spoke. 

"Hey, uh- what position do you play? Or will you play, I guess."

"I'm a hybrid," Nathaniel turned to look at everyone who looked confused. "Striker and backliner."

"Is that even legal? To play two positions?"

"Anything's legal if Tetsuji Moriyama is your coach. As co-creator of Exy he has a bit of a, we'll call it a tipping point with the ERC." 

"Oh." 

Yeah, oh.

* * *

Andrew had to admit, that the Wesninski kid was interesting. Besides his auburn curls and too pretty too blue eyes, and an accent that made Andrew wonder if he was born and raised in London, his knowledge of Castle Evermore's Nest was striking and you had to wonder how long he's been here. And a hybrid player, too. Truly what are Riko and Tetsuji Moriyama getting on to in the Nest?

"This is the Away locker room. Girls' changing room is on the right side, Boys' changing room is on the left. Go forth," the redhead said before going into the center, towards the lounge where Abby and Wymack both followed him. 

"I hate that kid," Reggie said as the boys started changing out. "He took all my coke. Then he _threw it **out.**_ " Dwayne and Damien nodded their agreement while Juan added on, "And my weed. How am I supposed to play without a joint?" 

"Like a normal person," Andrew deadpanned his sobriety on the horizon.

"That's rich coming from you."

"I don't know if you forgot, Dumb Dwayne but Andrew doesn't play with his meds," Nicky retorted. 

"Say that louder, Nicky. Let the Raven in the lounge hear you," Aaron said. 

"I don't think he's so bad," Matt joined in the conversation.

"Of course _you_ don't," Seth said.

"The fuck's that supposed to mean, Gordon?"

"Just that you're a fa-"

Before he can finish, Wesninski interrupts, "Gentlemen! Hurry your asses up, you have a half-hour until you have to get there to warm up. We still have to go over what I talked to your coach about, as well. Chop chop!"

* * *

"So what was **so** important that you just _had_ to talk to our dead old coach about?" Seth Gordon asks.

"Kevin Day and Jean Moreau will be joining your team after the winter banquet as assistant coaches. Next fall, they will join your line-up."

The entire lounge is silent for a moment while everyone processes the information that was just handed to him. Surprisingly, Aaron Minyard speaks up first. 

"If Jean Moreau joins our lineup then I'm gonna get demoted to sub backliner. No. Not fucking happening. And Kevin Day? As if he'd ever leave Riko's side."

"You'd be surprised by how often he does. And, you'll keep your starting backliner status if, by the beginning of summer practices, you can meet or excel Jean's skill."

"Not. Fucking. Happening," Seth says. "I'm not sharing the court with him."

"Would you rather a rookie who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing?" Seth opened his mouth again to argue but David Wymack interrupted. 

"It is happening. I will explain it all to you on the bus ride back to Palmetto and why it is happening, but right now, we need to prepare for the game."

"Hear that Wesninski? You're out of here." Damien Rameriez said. Nathaniel smirked and stayed where he was. 

"He's going to help us prepare for the game, actually. Nathaniel," Coach Wymack said. 

"Coach, he's a Raven," Dan said. Several of the Foxes nodded their agreement with their captain. 

"Not officially, I don't sign with them until January. Now, I can help and you don't make complete and utter fools of yourselves out there or I leave now and watch in amusement as the Ravens tear you apart."

"How could you help us?" Allison Reynolds asked, her tone serious and business-like.

"I've lived here, at the Nest, since I was seven-years-old. Since I was eight, I've been not only training all incoming Freshmen but also, creating the plays. Something about me having enough of a temper to deal with them while still maintaining some sane level of patience, and being better than anyone else available in Maths and Physics. Baseline, I know every single Raven inside and out. I know all of their weaknesses and all of their strengths. I would help to tell you these strengths and weaknesses."

"Why can't you just give us the counter-backs to their plays?" Dwayne Arthur asked. 

"Because it'd be too easy to know who helped you. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses could be credited to good pre-game analysis. Knowing their counter-backs would require help from the inside."

Dan Wilds looked at her team then at her coach. She nodded and so, Nathaniel began. He told them how Riko easily gets mad and isn't as accurate when aiming with his left hand. How Fuller isn't as fast on his left ankle and can easily be overpowered, that Barns can't prepare himself well-enough if you face him head-on, how Saunders likes to press his opponents between the wall and keep them there, how Miller's left ankle is healing from a recent sprain so it'd be easier to go for his left, and so on.

By the end of it, the Foxes looked more relaxed than they had when they stepped off that bus. 

"Thank you," Matt Boyd said. "We could stand a chance, now." Nathaniel shrugged and walked out of the locker room, the sound of the Foxes' hyped cheers and Wymack telling the "delinquents to calm themselves" echoing in the short distance.

* * *

"What do I have to give you for you to actually try tonight?" Wymack asked Andrew before they went on the court for warm-ups. "Number one through ten," Andrew replied. Wymack smiled and replied, "Four." Andrew shrugged and said, "I'll tell you when I want something." Wymack took that for the nothing-answer it was and moved to let Andrew threw the plexiglass door that separated the inner court from the outer court when the Home and Away benches were.

Hearing the door bolt shut behind him, he walked to the Away goal swallowing the bile that threatened to rise in his throat.

* * *

Dan Wilds won the coin toss against Riko but, even with Nathaniel's pre-game briefing, the Foxes weren't prepared for the Ravens. They were dysfunctional and solo-players where the Ravens were synchronized and a team. They weren't split up like the way Nathaniel noted the Foxes were. 

It seemed Minyard had actually tried tonight because he moved like lightning as if he knew where the ball was going before the ball even left the striker's net. Riko was not happy about it in the least and Kevin started getting frustrated quickly in the first quarter. 

By halftime, the score was only 4-2 in the Ravens' favor which made Riko even madder. He had to have known that someone helped the Foxes, or their analysis game truly upped a notch. The Ravens only ever had a score this low, and this close is when playing against the USC Trojans or Penn State Lions. Nathaniel felt a prideful smile tug at the corner of his lips as he gazed down at the court. He was glad that no one was making fun of the Foxes now, and that the Ravens were probably rashly hashing out whatever the fuck they're gonna do about the Foxes. 

Truthfully, Nathaniel didn't expect what they did coming into the third quarter. Tetsuji put in an entire line of Freshmen. Freshmen that Nathaniel knew little about since he'd only been working with them a few months. 

"What is he doing, Nathaniel?" Ichirou's voice from behind startled him out of his minor panic for both the Foxes and the Ravens. 

"He's taking a risk, sir. A huge one."

"Why?"

"The Foxes, they must've done a deeper analysis for the Ravens than initially thought. They're putting players out there that haven't even completed their drills yet, they haven't even seen the court for scrimmages." Not a single Freshman has yet mastered all eight drills which are required to play. 

"Are they going to be able to hold the game?"

"I- I don't know, my Lord. But I do know that this move, makes Tetsuji appear weak and desperate. He feels threatened and is doing his best to off-set it."

Ichirou nodded and remained quiet the rest of the game. The Freshmen Ravens appeared panicked and untrained. They're playing high school level in an NCAA Class I game.

The Freshmen gave up enough points that the Foxes were in the lead, 6-4 at the end of the third quarter and Tetsuji put his starters back in, refreshed and out for blood. For all Nathaniel's insight on the Ravens was worth, it did nothing to prepare for the slaughter that was the fourth quarter. Reggie Stow was the Foxes' goalkeeper and he was too slow to block many of the assaults on the goal.

The Foxes lost the game 20-8. Not the worst the Foxes had ever lost, but certainly not a win.

* * *

Two months later, the ERC started spreading rumors. Rumors that Kevin Day was being held back by Riko and Tetsuji Moriyama to make Riko look like the better and stronger striker. The night before the Christmas banquet at Virginia University, Tetsuji ordered a shootout. 

Kevin against Riko.

They put their best goalkeeper, a fifth-year senior in the goal that night. Jean was Kevin's backliner and because Nathaniel wouldn't be revealed for another month, the other starting backliner, Matthew Fox, was Riko's.

Nathaniel watched from the East Tower alongside both Kengo and Ichirou.

"What will happen if Kevin Day wins?" Kengo had asked. Ichirou looked to Nathaniel.

"If Kevin wins, Riko will retaliate, my Lord. There is no telling how great but rage does unexplainable things to oneself. Kevin is no doubt the stronger striker, and Tetsuji has indeed been holding him back. Riko knows this and takes his jealousy out of others. He knows I'm Kevin's weak point, so he goes after me to hurt him."

Kengo nodded in understanding and whispered something in Japanese to Ichirou. It was too quiet for Nathaniel to hear every word, but he's certain he heard "hand" and "break". The thought made Nathaniel nauseous. 

A dealer pitched the ball up the court and both Kevin and Riko went flying for it. The score was tied and whoever scored this next point, would win. Nathaniel swallowed the rising vomit at the thought of something happening to Kevin.

Riko got to the ball first, but Kevin clicked their sticks together in his on-court aggression and got the ball in his net. He went down the court towards Jean where he stood, ready to counter Kevin's moves. Riko was furious, barreling behind Kevin, running towards him at a speed he's rarely shown on the court. 

As Kevin passes the ball to the court wall, rebounding it off of the wall and back into his net as he stepped around Jean and caught the ball in his net, Kevin made a fatal mistake. 

He hesitated. As he lined his net in front of the goal for the shot, he hesitated. That second's hesitation was enough for Riko to check into Day, stealing the ball from his net and scoring the winning point. 

"What will happen if Riko wins, yet Kevin let him?" Ichirou asked.

"I do not know, my Lord. Yet I fear greatly that I'm about to find out."

Find out, Nathaniel did. After being escorted back to the locker room where Kevin, Riko, Jean, and Matthew were showering, and Matthew was told to leave, it was just them. The Perfect Court.

Riko had his Exy racket in hand. 

"Nathaniel, hold Kevin's arms down for me. Jean, get his legs. Now, move." When neither Nathaniel nor Jean made a move and instead exchanged weary, scared, and concerned looks with each other and Kevin, Riko snapped. 

"I said, _**MOVE**_ _!"_

Kevin nodded at his brothers and laid on the ground. Nathaniel swallowed bile as he went to Kevin's head and held his arms. Jean held Kevin's ankles. Riko raised his racket above Kevin's left hand and Nathaniel stood and grabbed it. 

"You know what happens if you touch what is mine, Riko." Actually, he didn't know and neither did Nathaniel but he felt it was his safest option. 

"Yours? _Yours?_ They are not yours, Nathaniel. I **own** them. I own **you.** "

"You own nothing and no one. They--we--are Main Branch property. We are under their protection. You are nothing but a castaway second-son who lives off of the crumbs of power that your older brother gives you."

Riko ripped his racket out of Nathaniel's hand and slammed it into his ribs. Nathaniel gasped painfully and fell on to the hard, cold black tile. 

"No!" Kevin shouted, Jean was silently shaking with rage.

Riko raised his racket again and brought it down on Kevin's left hand. Kevin screamed and whithered and cried. Nathaniel tried to get up. Kevin's left hand was shattered. He was a left-handed athlete.

"You will pay for that!" Nathaniel yelled.

"Brother, get him out of here. Go to the East Tower. The Lord and the Heir may still be there. Tell them what happened, tell them to get Kevin and you to Virginia or Palmetto, and to call Coach Wymack. Tell him, them all, 'Code Raven'," he shouted to Jean in French. He nodded and took Kevin's crumpled and still crying form into his arms. 

"I don't think so," Riko went to pick up his racket again but Nathaniel gripped his foot and yanked on it, pulling him to the ground.

Jean turned around to look at the sight in front of him; his brother and former captain fighting, tangled in the other's limbs. 

"Nathaniel!" He yelled, "Thank you, brother. For everything that you've done for us these last few years. I will see you again soon, I promise. I love you," he said in Dutch. A language that Nathaniel had been teaching Jean ever since Jean was sixteen and had overheard Nathaniel practicing the language. For Nathaniel's ears alone.

Nathaniel met Jean's gaze from across the locker room. "I love you, too, brother." He whispered in the same language. Then Jean turned and ran, with Kevin with him. 

"You- you will pay for _that,_ " Riko snarled while throwing a punch at Nathaniel's face.

"Maybe I will. But it'll be worth it," Nathaniel said while looking Riko in the eyes with nothing short of defiant fury. He punched Riko in his stomach when they heard the heavy pounding of approaching footsteps echo in the halls. 

Tetsuji appeared with his cane and several other Ravens behind him. He saw the puddle of blood in the middle of the floor and looked around. 

"Where are Day and Moreau?" 

Nathaniel smiled his father's smile. "Gone."

His coach's eyes hardened, "What the fuck do you mean 'gone'?" 

"Are you hard hearing? I mean it. They're gone. You're not going to be seeing them for a while, Tetsuji. They're not Ravens anymore. And I have both the Lord's and the Heir's blessing, you can **not** go after them," he said in Japanese. 

"Pick him up," Tetsuji ordered two of the freshmen. Tetsuji raised his cane and began to mercilessly beat it down on Nathaniel. His ribs, legs, arms, head, and groin. When he was let go, he dropped to the ground. 

"Clean up the blood."

The following days were horrible. Seniors in and out of his room at their leisure to fuck him, Tetsuji had taken the door off of its hinges. His meal privileges were taken away, and he was only "rewarded" with them once every two weeks so he didn't die of hunger. Riko came in with his knives drawn and ready the day after they got back from the Christmas banquet and something tells Nathaniel that it didn't go over well.

Blood and pain were all Nathaniel knew those first four Raven days after his brothers left. The pain as a knife cut vertically down his torso along with three horizontal lines connecting to it at the top, middle, and bottom, creating a '3' on his body. 

Hands-on him, screaming, more hands, more mouths, more bodies. 

He was still expected to practice both his positions while nearly fainting from fatigue, hunger, and thirst. Sarah Lewis manages to get him an energy bar one day after lunch when everyone was on their eight-hour off in their sixteen-hour Raven days. Even Riko and Miller and Saunders have to sleep. He was able to eat it and drink a Gatorade that Alex Fuller had left him without vomiting and he savored the feeling of eating and drinking something that wasn't drugged. 

He was alone, finally. Not one, not even his brothers who'd been with him for so long were there to stitch him up after Riko had his fun. The blood, sweat, and semen covering his bed made Nathaniel vomit whenever he caught sight of it. And just because he could, he slept in Jean's bed. Wore Jean's clothes. Anything that smelt like him, that smelt like some-what safety and the familiarity of relative happiness, he took. He took and he cowered it away from Riko's eyes so that he could have it for himself. He needed it, like oxygen to breathe. He savored it like he did the rare food and drink he was given.

Nathaniel didn't think he'd be able to survive this, to not break, if he didn't.

* * *

When Jean Moreau showed up with a bloody and crying Kevin Day hours before they had to leave for the Christmas banquet at Virginia University, Coach was furious. Not at any of the Foxes, or Kevin or Jean, but the Ravens. At Tetsuji and RIko Moriyama. 

As Abby tended to Kevin's broken left hand while he slept perched on Jean's shoulder, the Foxes surrounded them. Jean glared dangerous daggers and his pale gray eyes were red-rimmed. 

"Get away from him," he'd say, trying to sound convincing but his voice would come out soft and almost broken. The Foxes gave them more room, nonetheless.

"What happened?" Renee asked

"Tetsuji, Riko, everyone. The ERC started a rumor--that, mind you, is true--that Riko and Tetsuji were holding Kevin back from being the best because they wanted Riko to be the best. He wasn't. Tetsuji held a shootout to see who won. Riko won, but only because when Kevin had his winning shot, he hesitated. Riko broke his hand in retaliation for his actions."

"And that redhead with the number three on his cheek?" Matt asked, he seemed rather intrigued by the seventeen-year-old but in a potential-platonic friendship way and not in a romantic way.

"He stayed behind so that we could get away." Jean's eyes drifted to the corner of the room as if they could see elsewhere, probably to the Nest where the little martyr still resided.

"He-what? Is he going to be okay?" Allison asked, her light brows scrunched together and her mouth was drawn downwards.

"I don't fucking know what's going to happen to him."

"Foxes, let's give them some room. Abby will stay here with the two of them while we go to the banquet so let's go."

At Virginia University, someone had the good foresight to sit the Ravens and Foxes away from each other. The most noticeable difference with the Ravens? Three little birdies were missing. 

The Foxes were able to not have to leave their assigned table earlier, for once. How nice? During the "social session" Riko and his flock of blackbirds came flying towards them.

"Riko," Wilds regarded him cooly, her usual excitement drastically dimmed.

" **Hennesey**."

"Watch it, Moriyama," Matt warned.

"Missing some birdies, Riko?" Andrew asked, his manic grin taking over his face. Riko's dark eyes snapped over to him while they burned in fury.

"He sent them to you? Oh, I'm going to enjoy killing him."

"Actually, can you thank him for us?" Seth asked a mischievous smirk on his lips.

"Seth, no," Dan warned.

"Thank him for what? Giving you my broken seconds?" Riko laughed humorlessly and several of his other birds joined in. 

Andrew was getting very tired of the bastard very fast.

"No, for the insight on all your players. He briefed us during our pre-game analysis."

"Seth!" Dan hissed, furious. Wesninski had asked them to not say anything to anyone about him helping them with it. He said that if someone, especially Riko or Tetsuji, found out he'd be in serious trouble. As serious trouble as a broken bone, perhaps? How lovely.

"He did **what**?" One of the Ravens, Ava Jenkins, hissed. Seth simply smiled. The damage had been done. Just how great did Gordon make the scarred little bird pay?

"I can't believe you just did that," Stow commented when the flock of birds flew their way to the hotel

Gordon, the bastard, shrugged. "He threw out our drugs. He should pay for them."

"Drugs you weren't even supposed to have in the first place. Do you have any idea what you've just done?" Nicky added. "Riko's an abusive piece of shit, that much we know from the little that Jean told us. You could've just gotten him seriously injured."

"A few cuts and bruises, oh boo hoo."

"Fuck you guys," Matt spat. "He's a kid and shouldn't even have to experience that shit."

"You heard him, he said he's lived there since he was seven. He's seventeen now meaning a nice ten long years of whatever Riko and Tetsuji could do. It can't be that bad," Damien said. 

Andrew was really starting to wish he was allowed to bring his knives to stab a few certain drug addicts. Druggies, Wesninski had called them. He was starting to appease to the name. The thought made him want to vomit.

The wish that he'd brought his knives to the banquet had started to grow when they got back to campus the next day and Moreau immediately shoved Gordon against the wall. 

"What did you do?" He demanded. His face was red with fury and Day who now had a cast on his hand was pale and flushed in anger simultaneously. Gordon looked at him innocently, "I have no idea what you mean." 

"You said something to Riko. What was it?"

"Jean, what happened?" Renee asked calmly. Jean gestured to Kevin who swallowed and gave Renee his phone. Whatever she saw made her shut it off and quickly give it back to the broken athlete. "What- what did that say?"

"It means 'one who betrays' in Japanese. So tell me, Gordon, what the **fuck** did you say to Riko last night?" His French accent was thicker, Andrew noted.

"Maybe you should ask your little redhead friend." Moreau punched Gordon in the gut and while he went down wheezing, Renee got Jean away from him. "Don't- don't talk about him," he growled out. 

"What happened?" Boyd asked. What is it with him and this minor obsession with the kid and knowing he was okay?

"Just that because **someone** had to open their fucking mouth, my brother got a piece of his forearm cut off, then branded with the phrase 'traitor' in the skin underneath. You know, nothing major," Moreau said with a dead calm tone. All eyes snapped to Gordon, most angry, some fearful, some--from his fellow druggies, the retched bastards, who, Andrew hoped would burn in hell--proud. 

" _A few cuts and bruises_ , my fucking ass. Fuck you, Gordon," Nicky spat. A rare venom in his voice. The juniors, Boyd, and 'monsters' nodded their agreement. The one thing they can agree on as a ~~somewhat~~ team and its that the kid deserved better and that Gordon was an asshole. How charming.

Winter break went downhill from there, with Moreau, Day, and the monsters staying with Abby and Moreau dragging Day there every day as well. Their sleep schedules were fucked due to some stupid adjustment to sixteen-hour 'Raven days' that they use during breaks. Andrew had to deal with complaints in German about Nicky missing his boyfriend and how Erik was unable to fly to South Carolina for Christmas or New Years'. He didn't miss the way his clone stared at his phone in longing as if expecting a text from a certain deal-breaking Vixen. Whispers in French and Japanese as Day and Moreau planned practices and how they were going to get the Foxes to at least the first death-match since they'd placed fourth in the district and would play against Breckenridge in the first round come mid-January. 

Well, come, mid-January and Day and Moreau are tense as a straught cord as they look at their phones as if waiting for some world-changing announcement.

"We're waiting for the announcement that says Nathaniel's signed with the Ravens. We were all officially signed on our eighteenth birthdays and seeing as today is Nathaniel's eighteenth, well- you get the idea," Day explained in practice. 

Of course, the broken bird with too pretty blue eyes and too auburn curls that the two broken Ravens had left behind in their dear Nest.

Moreau murmured something in French to Day which made him pale and tense up. He showed him his phone and at Kevin's frantic shake of his head, scowled and brought it up to his ear before walking away talking in Japanese as he went. 

Andrew was really starting to ~~despise~~ loathe broken birds talking in languages that he couldn't understand.

As Gordon and Arthur took shots at the goal with Andrew just standing there with a manic smile too excited to be real on his face, Moreau took the call to the other side of the outer court on the Away side. He started talking loudly enough that if Andrew strained his ears--which he was certainly _not_ doing--he could hear him. The asshole was speaking in English, how interesting.

"-alive? How?... No, I know **how** but I just- I don't understand. Why would he fake it? No... Yes. Fuck, yeah okay on it." He shut his phone and walked back over to Day before they both walked over to Wymack. The coaches went into Wymack's office so they weren't overheard again.

How unfortunate, especially because he wanted to know what the fuck was going on that made them have to go to his office for such, hopefully, trivial matters.

Fifteen minutes later the Foxes were changing out of their gear and none of their three coaches had stepped out of the office since they went in. Five minutes later, all the Foxes were in the lounge waiting for at least one of their coaches to dismiss them for practice. Finally, the door opened up. Wymack looked as if he'd aged a decade while Day looked pale--what a surprise, the loser paled at almost everything these days--and Moreau looked somewhat satisfied with himself.

"What was that about?" Captain Fox asked. Her frame was tense as if waiting for some big bomb to drop on them. One couldn't blame her, though, because the universe seemed destined to ruin the Foxes.

"Just recruitment stuff for next season," Moreau answered. The light smile which he wore when he came out of the office was still on his lips. His gray eyes were shining and bright, which wasn't anything Andrew had seen since meeting the bird.

"So early? We usually wait until spring."

"These are special recruits, and other schools want them," Day added. His skin had gained some of its color back and his green eyes were alert with a relaxed body.

"Special **how**?" Reynolds asked. She was sat in her usual seat beside Renee with the elbows leaning against her knees as she leaned forward. "High risk, unstable, or something else?"

"Special as in they're important to someone important to us so they're in turn, important to us."

These birdies were getting on Andrew's already frayed nerves, he decided as he sat up from where he laid across one of the couches.

"Don't do be so aloof, just tell us who they are little birds." Andrew interrupted and Moreau glared at him. He opened his mouth to say something when everyone's phones went off. Everyone pulled out their phones and looked at the most recent news headlines.

_**NATHANIEL WESNINSKI: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE EDGAR ALLAN RAVENS' NEWEST PERFECT COURT MEMBER** _

The article went on to talk about how Nathaniel was born in Baltimore, his father was Nathan Wesninski or the Butcher of Baltimore--a fact which made several Foxes from the East Coast flinch--and how he has a twin sister and younger brother--wasn't that information so very convenient, Moreau and Day both talk about people important to someone who's important to them--the only logical answer is Wesninski--and suddenly this information comes out? Interesting, indeed. 

What's also interesting? How Nathaniel's mother had left the United States and moved back to London, with two of her children when Nathaniel was five. It was painfully obvious that Nathaniel was **not** one of those two children and his siblings had been able to grow up in posh and overcrowded England and not in an underground hell-hole known as the Nest in Charleston, West Virginia. 

It also said that true to Nathaniel's word, he'd been living at the Nest since he was seven-years-old after his father had been arrested for the first time. Apparently, Tetsuji was a family friend of Nathan's and had offered to take him in, seeing as he was already taking care of his nephew and Day at the time, it makes sense to use it as a cover story.

It was similar to Moreau's cover story about how he'd decided to go to high school in the States at fourteen and Tetsuji, a family friend of the Moreau's in Marseille, France, had offered to give him a high school and college education while also playing Exy.

Typical little birds with their lies and covers.

"So we're getting his twin sister next year and younger brother in two years?" Renee asked. She was still staring at her phone, grip clammy and skin pale. 

"No. Nicholas, his brother, is in the same grade as Natalie, his sister. I guess he skipped a grade in elementary school and joined her grade because they couldn't be away from each other for too long without panicking. One would guess when you only have another person for so long, you start becoming codependent," Moreau explained. Well didn't that sound a lot like a specific flock of Ravens up north in West Virginia, with their codependency and shit? How ~~agravating~~ exciting.

"One, how do they qualify for our fucked up halfway house team? And two, are they even any good?" Gordon asked. 

"We wouldn't consider them if they didn't qualify. And other schools, like Edgar Allan, wouldn't want them if they weren't any good," Kevin said flatly. His posture was stiff, defensive and his emerald irisis were narrowed towards the offender. "If Edgar Allan wants them, why are you interfering? Won't they want to be with Nathaniel and vise-versa?" Aaron asked. Andrew subtly sighed, of **course** his clone had to get involved instead of silently spectating from his place on the couch. 

"No. Nate would want to see them, but not there. Not in black and red," Jean replied before shivering as if imagining what would happen if Wesninski met his siblings and they were on **his** court in _his_ home for the last decade in _**his**_ team's colors. "He doesn't believe it safe for them, which is probably one of the most true things he's ever believed."

"Great. So it's settled then? They're both going to be Foxes come June practice?" Dan asked. The three coaches nodded. 

_Oh how wonderful_ , Andrew thought, _More broken Foxes that needed fixing_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm truly so sorry for this chapter but it's very important since it sets up the main plot-line. Um so yeah, my baby Nathaniel isn't doing well on his own, is he? 
> 
> I'm glad I can finally start introducing the Foxes' dynamic better this way, as well. 
> 
> Rather large (not really but it's a few months) time-jump starting at the beginning of the next chapter!


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel is broken. 
> 
> Where did it all go wrong?
> 
> * * * 
> 
> Tears and angst, that's it. That's like... all this chapter is. (Okay maybe a little bit of humor).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So fast forward a few weeks (I changed my mind from the last chapter) from Chapter Four (with some flashbacks/descriptions of the time between, I'm sorry for said descriptions of the time between).
> 
> Um... prepare to cry because I did while writing, lol. Lots of angst too! Yeah, so that's pretty much it, lol. (That's a lie, there's a bit of humor too and some of the tears will be happy tears). 
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> torture, rape, food deprivation, abuse, knives, blood, burns, violence, self-harm (cutting), homophobic language, murder, pedophilia, and death.
> 
> Proceed at your own risk, and as always, comment if I forgot a trigger warning and I'll add it.
> 
> Enjoy!

Nathaniel was broken. He was empty and numb and for the first time in over a decade, the raging and defiant fire deep inside him was nothing more than mere embers.

Weeks--or was it months now?--have passed since his brothers left. Since Riko broke Kevin's hand and Nathaniel made Kevin and Jean leave the Nest to be safe from his wrath ~~if~~ when Kengo Moriyama died. Nathaniel no longer knows the concept of time or the concept of being loved and cared for, nor does he know the concept of being ~~allowed~~ able to eating and drinking regularly. He misses his brothers. He misses the small amount of love and care they carried with them, for him. Nathaniel wondered how his brothers were doing. If they'd 'mixed' well with the Foxes and if Kevin had told the coach about him being his father. Somehow he doubted it, though. Kevin was probably too stubborn and too scared to ruin anything if he told the older man. Though if someone deserved a relationship if their father, it was someone whose father wasn't the head of a mob and was in fact too much of a bleeding heart to let a broken kid go and slip through his fingertips.

Nathaniel never had a good relationship with his father. Always the center of his abuse and torture, of his cleaver and Lola's knives and Jackson's cigarette burns and Romero's hits and punches. Always angering one more than Natalie or Nicholas so they didn't have to bear scars like his.

Always the center of a prostitute's pleasure--not that they had wanted it any more than four-year-old Nathaniel did. He'd scream and cry as a four-year-old did and they'd _touch_ him where he wasn't remotely close to being properly developed. When the playful light and vibrant life in his bright blue eyes and the small smile that occasionally graced his small lips disappeared for the first time; becoming dead and lifeless. Blank and neutral. 

Nathaniel wondered what it was that finally broke him. He remembers the victorious smile that gleamed in his "king's" eyes when he walked into the locker room one morning for practice as he got changed and paid no attention to anyone. Where his mind was off in some alternate universe where he was happy and with his family and free to do as he wished as long as he stayed out of any--legal--trouble.

He supposes it could just be here, alone, in the darkness of the Nest where the only light was the dim red lights that hung overhead. Or Riko and Nathaniel being his new partner and being moved into Kevin's room, into Kevin's bed where his belongings still hung up everywhere as if he was at classes and would be back in a few hours. The Exy posters he had hung up when Nathaniel was thirteen hanging overhead as well as the various postcards and photographs Kevin had taken while traveling around the world with Riko when allowed a brief vacation.

He'd been moved from the room he'd known for eleven years, seven of which he'd shared with a brother no longer there. 

It made sense, in Nathaniel's mind. Riko and he had both lost their partners so they were paired together. But, he was closer to his abuser than ever before. He'd never slept in Kevin's room before since Kevin had always come to his and Jean's room when they were younger for sleepovers if you could even call them that. 

Nathaniel thinks that's what did it. Being paired with his abuser who had access to all of Nathaniel's worst nightmares. His father and his people, the Ravens--both past and present--who always had their fun when rewarded with Nathaniel for a good game. 

He was also closer to knives, though, too. Knives which were his worst nightmare soon became the only friend he had. He welcomed the warm blood that'd flow out of his wrist as he cut, never deep enough to kill him but enough to make him **feel** something. Lines which he made to match the scars on his chest. A '3' on his forearm, below his 'traitor' brand which he got during winter break. Lines intersecting the other and making right angles and rash and quickly made slashes across his chest from one of Riko's random outbursts of anger. Forearms brands with Japanese characters that form the words _faggot_ and _traitor_ and _whore_ and _worthless_ which Riko was all too happy to cut into his skin and burn it with.

His ribs and bones were too easy to make out through his paper-thin skin. Ichirou had stopped summoning him to the East Tower which made Nathaniel think something was wrong. He'd always been summoned, whether he was sick or on death's doorstep wrapped head-to-toe in bloody bandages like a mummy. 

Of course, something was wrong. The universe was **just** _constantly_ destined to make Nathaniel's life as horrible as possible with no time to heal or be happy. 

His father got out of prison a year early and decided to visit his son a few weeks after Nathaniel's eighteenth birthday. Lola, Romero, and Jackson were all there, too. It was the usual, "Junior," in a mocking tone that made Nathaniel flinch followed by pain and new scars and numbness and reminiscing how they had killed Nathaniel's mother in front of him eleven years ago by beheading her with Nathan's cleaver when she tried to take him to London as she had done with Natalie and Nicholas, two years prior, when Nathaniel was five. 

He never forgave her for leaving him, for taking his siblings away from him, his only tether to reality. The only bits of minor happiness he was able to achieve at such a young age, where there was supposed to be happiness and love and positive memories he got bruises and scars and nightmares. He felt little remorse for her death except what it would mean for his twin and a younger brother who'd lived in London with her and their uncle. 

They'd clung to her through much of Nathaniel's life with them, they never knew that she would sneak into his room at night and beat him until his bruises were bleeding or there were bald-spots where his hair had been tugged out of his scalp by her firm grip. They'd never knew the end of any of their father's or his people's weapons or the knuckles of their mother, Nathaniel made sure of it. Made sure to protect and care for his younger siblings--even if Natalie was only a few minutes younger than him--he protected them with everything he had. Until he didn't. Until he couldn't.

Until he was ten and for Nathaniel's tenth birthday, he was given the death certificates of his two younger siblings. 

Nathaniel's yet to forgive himself for that. He refuses to, because if he'd fought a little harder, if he'd angered his father a little more, maybe it would be him dead instead of them. Instead of the kind and naive children, they once were. Instead of the mature and caring and grateful and kind adults, they'd never get to be. 

So Nathaniel cut. He cut to feel and be in control because both things were unknown to him. He didn't know what it was like to **truly** **feel** and he never has been or ever will be **in control** of his life. 

Cutting and trying to feel and trying to be in control was useless, he soon realized because no less than three days after his birthday, Kengo Moriyama died.

Kengo died and Tetsuji and Nathaniel went to his funeral and Riko stayed at the Nest. Kengo died and Nathaniel was cut and punched and kicked and touched by the older Ravens and he was high out of his mind on speedballs which Riko had strapped him down and shot him up with.

Kengo **died** and part of Nathaniel died with him, _**too**_.

* * *

Andrew's life got ever the more ~~interesting~~ exhausting when a week after it was announced that Nathaniel Wesninski was the Perfect Court's missing Number Three, and only a few hours before the Foxes had to travel to Edgar Allan University to go against the Ravens since they--by some God-given miracle--managed to secure the third spot in the southeastern district when two midgets barged into the Foxhole Court's lounge where the team was assembled.

As soon as Day, Moreau, and Wymack saw who interrupted their speech, they froze. Day's mouth opened and closed a few times before one of the midgets spoke. 

"Don't let us interrupt you, Kevin. Go on, continue," a girl with wavy blonde hair, stormy gray eyes, and a British accent said. Oh, how interesting. "Natalie?" Moreau eventually asked. The girl, Natalie Hatford, smiled. "At your service." Beside her, a boy maybe an inch or two taller than her rolled his pale gray eyes, his auburn curls falling into his face.

"Ignore her, she's a bit... weird."

Natalie looked at the boy--assumably her brother, Nicholas--offended. " _I'm_ weird? Listen here asshole-" she got cut off by Day clearing his throat, seeming to have finally found his words. Around him, the team had gone silent and stared at the two Hatfords silently. 

"Wha- what are you guys doing here?"

Natalie looked at him like he had grown a second head while Nicholas muttered something about dumb Irishmen. "Have you not heard?"

"Heard what?" It was Wymack who'd asked, he looked a bit worried, more alert than he usually allowed to show in front of the team.

"Kengo Moriyama is dead. We're here because tonight, we're getting our brother away from the Nest. For good," Nicholas explained like it was the most casual thing in the world. Kevin blanched and Jean looked like a deer in headlights, with Wymack looking sick to his stomach and everyone else looking confused.

"He can't be _dead_ ," Jean commented. Natalie crossed her arms over her chest and said, "His health's been declining for months. It's about time the old bloke finally kicked the bucket, yes?"

"That's not very nice to say," Renee said. Andrew was getting tired of sitting and wanted to go back to his dorm or break into Wymack's apartment to steal a bottle of whiskey before the game but neither seemed like an option right now, how despicable.

"She's not a very nice person," her brother commented, earning him a pinch on his elbow making him yelp and rub at the spot. "Case and point," he muttered. 

"Bastard." Natalie retorted. 

"Cunt." The younger Hatford spat back and the older girl's eyes lit up like a lightning storm causing Nicholas to run and seek asylum next to Moreau. As if he could do anything.

"Anyway," she drawled. "We're coming with you tonight."

"I don't even understand how. I mean like Ich-"

"Ichirou and our uncle made a deal."

"Oh."

"Um, sorry to interrupt but we have a game to get ready for," Wilds says. Natalie looks her up and down and says something in--Polish?--to Nicholas who rolled his eyes and muttered something back, a frown on his face. 

"Of course," he said. 

"I vote these bastard Brits leave," Seth said, making all the juniors plus Boyd and Nicky glare at them, along with Day and Moreau. Natalie clicked her tongue. "It's nice to know we're wanted, considering in six months we're Foxes."

"They _stay_ , Gordon," Moreau grounded out between his teeth. Nicholas's smile was smug as he sauntered over to Kevin's side. The taller man rolled his eyes and looked at Natalie expediently. She innocently held her hands up. "I am not responsible for him."

Kevin muttered something in French to Jean who snorted but choked on said snort when Natalie replied in the same language, a smug smirk all over her face. 

"Smugness does **not** look good on you, Ava-May," her brother muttered.

Rameriez snorted, "Ava-May? Good joke, Hatford." A knife landed in the middle of his legs where they've spread apart as he draped himself over his chair near his balls. He screamed and looked up at the two siblings who both looked indifferent.

"You're fucking crazy," he muttered. "Coach, they're crazy."

"Says the one who's high as a kite before a game against the best team in the country," Nicholas claimed. What the fuck is it with these Wesninski-Hatford siblings and being able to tell if someone's high or carrying? Damn bloodhounds.

"Dammit, Rameriez!" Coach bellowed. "I told you to stop carrying and using that shit on school property." Damien simply shrugged. Wymack sighed and dragged his hand down his face while muttering something under his breath, too quiet to hear.

"Don't we have a game to prepare for? I'm tired of this nonsense," Aaron said. 

"Yes." Coach and Dan replied at the same time.

The Hatfords stayed around, stationed next to Moreau and Day like miniature shadows. When it was time to get on the bus, they both brought along black duffle bags which they set down in the aisle and took out various guns and knives, and began to clean them. 

Nicky gasped, "What- are those guns and knives?"

The words got attention from everyone on the bus so while Wymack drove and muttered about kids with weapons, Abby looked back at them along with the upperclassmen. 

Natalie didn't even look up from the throwing knife she was cleaning as she said, "Yes. My father is going to be there tonight, along with my uncle, meaning a bloodbath and a rescue mission for my brother. We'd be dead fools if we went in **unarmed**." Nicholas added, cleaning the barrel of his pistol, "And we're not fools. Or dead."

" _Yet_ ," Gordon said.

The younger Hatford rolled his eyes and snarled something in Polish which Natalie replied to snappily. Reynolds whistled from upfront, "Very merry folks, yes?" Captain Fox sighed, "Let them do their job, okay? They most likely need to prepare and be ready."

Natalie scoffed, "We were born ready."

* * *

Born ready, Natalie Ava-May and Nicholas Andras Wesninski were. What they were not born ready for? Seeing their older brother after thirteen years. 

Nathaniel Abram Wesninski looked like the definition of death, wrapped in bandages and with a limp and dead, icy blue eyes matching their father's. His skin was pale though, that'd make sense because he'd lived underground for over a decade. 

When Nathaniel saw them, he blinked back in surprise and murmured something in Dutch which made Jean still and clench his jaw in raw anger. "What?" Natalie asked from beside him, Jean threw her a side glance and said in French, "He said, ' _Damn drugs with their hallucinations. Making me see my dead siblings and shit_ ,' which makes me think that Riko's been drugging him." The words make Nathaniel look at them and serve them all assessing looks before rolling his eyes and motioning them forward. He typed in an access code into the keypad which unlocked a door to what felt like eternal darkness.

"Jeanie, oh how long I've been waiting for this," Nathaniel said in French to Jean. "You too, Kev," he added. The corners of Jean's mouth quirked up as he replied, "We missed you too." Then he switched to Dutch and said something that made Nathaniel sigh and looks at Jean with those dull eyes of his before replying in the same language. 

"Show me, later?" Jean asked in English drawing several eyes of the Foxes to them. "Maybe," Nathaniel replied. Jean seemed to like the answer to whatever he asked because he smiled and ruffled Nathaniel's auburn curls causing him to groan and swat his hand away, muttering about French bastards. 

He pulled something out from one of the jackets and handed it to Jean. "Really?" The older man asked and the younger one nodded. 

Natalie wanted to say or do something, something to get her twin to notice her but she knew that he still thought she and Nicholas were dead. That they were just hallucinations of drugs that Riko has him on. Natalie wanted to find Riko and torture him and kill him forever laying a hand on her brother, and Jean, and Kevin. She wanted him to pay for everything he's done. Natalie knows that the time to do so will come, but it would not be tonight. No, tonight was all about killing her father, his people, and saving her twin from this dark hell.

"What is it?" Dan Wilds asked.

"The Ravens' Playbook," Kevin and Jean said simultaneously. Matt Boyd's eyes went wide with shock. "I thought you said you could get in a lot of trouble if someone found out you were helping us," Renee Walker said, concern evident in her tone.

"I did. However, **someone** ," Nathaniel said while giving a pointed look towards Seth Gordon who stilled and audibly swallowed before continuing, "already told Riko I helped you and I paid the price. But, there's nothing that Riko or Tetsuji can do to me which they haven't already done so, fuck it. Besides, they can't prove I gave the book to you and if I have to, I can play it that Jean stole it from me." Jean looked offended, "Thank you, brother, for throwing me under the bus." Nathaniel simply nodded and continued walking to the Away locker room. He opened the door for the team and gestured them all inside before joining them in the lounge. 

"Have fun and try not to be devoured," Nathaniel said before walking back towards the door leading into the Nest. "Why are you armed?" Kevin asked.

"Father got out of prison a year early so he's coming tonight and supposedly, the Hatfords are coming too. It's most likely going to be an execution and I'm not stupid enough to think that Ichirou would extend his personal protection to me, hence, the gun and several knives," he said while gesturing towards his body.

Kevin nodded and said, "See you after?" Kevin knew very well that he would, that Nathaniel would be coming back to Palmetto State with them afterward.

Nathaniel shrugged and left. 

"He's going to the East Tower. Follow him so you know the way," Jean told the two Hatford siblings who nodded and followed after their brother into the dark abyss.

* * *

Nathaniel braced himself for the amount of blood that was going to be shed that night. He hadn't seen or heard from his mother's family since he was five-years-old--right before he came to the Nest--and couldn't bury the hatred he felt because of it. 

He opened the door separating him from his Lord and both sides of his dangerously fucked up family and immediately felt uncomfortable with both the attention brought upon by both sides and the tension.

"Junior!" Lola exclaimed. 

"Nathaniel," Stuart Hatford greeted.

"Silence," Ichirou demanded. Both sides quieted immediately and Nathaniel had to admit that it was minorly amusing. Ichirou beckoned Nathaniel forward and only when Nathaniel was at his side, did he speak again."Let them in," he said one of his guards who nodded and opened the door that Nathaniel had walked in through only moments before. 

Nathaniel's heart stopped and he had to blink. Before him, stood two gray-eyed adults, a girl with wavy blonde hair like his mother's and the other, a boy with auburn curls identical to his own. 

"You're real," he mutters, more to himself than anyone else, but he knew everyone else heard him. The blonde girl scoffs, "Of course we're real, Abram. Why wouldn't we?" The childhood nickname caught him off guard and he swallowed. 

"You're both supposed to be dead."

"The same could be said for you, yet you aren't."

"What?" Nathaniel asked, dumbfounded for a rare moment.

"If I may speak, my Lord?" Stuart Hatford asked Ichirou who nodded. "When Natalie turned ten, Nathaniel, we received _your_ death certificate in the mail, courtesy of your **dear** father."

Nathaniel huffed out a humorless laugh, "How ironic that on my tenth birthday I received the death certificates of my twin sister and younger brother. Oh, Nathan," he scuffed, "Did you think you could let me go my entire life believing that I failed? That I failed to protect my younger siblings?" 

Nathaniel stalked closer to his sperm donor, a jaguar stalking its prey, his knives at the ready. Nathan Wesninski swallowed while his lackeys wearily backed away. Nathaniel spoke in Polish, a language he knows neither his father nor people know, but Natalie Ava-May Wesninski and Nicholas Andras Wesninski, do, "Get the lackeys, I get the Butcher. Make it hurt."

Several knives thrown from his right, where Natalie and Nicholas were, hit true between their ribs and limbs and sunk deep into muscle. Lola's and Jackson's and Romero's screams sounded like pure harmony to Nathaniel. But he ~~wanted~~ needed to hear his father's screams. He _needed_ to hear the screams of the man who drew the sound out of so many, had drawn them out of Nathaniel since he was three-years-old and had cried one wail too many during the night and received three slashed on his little torso. The first of many slashes and cries and screams and scars and nightmares.

And, Nathaniel Abram Wesninski was going to make his father pay for each single one of them.

* * *

Jean went over the Ravens' plays and their counterbacks in the few minutes they had for another pre-game analysis with Kevin commenting along here and there when needed. The Foxes were ecstatic and confident that they weren't going to embarrass themselves like headless chickens riding blind donkeys out on the court when the time came.

On the court, Andrew denied the Ravens--especially Riko--each goal they tried to score on him. The angrier Riko got, the more frustrated and the more frustrated he got, the sloppier his shots. 

For every play the Ravens whipped out, the Foxes countered them. It didn't matter who they put out or how much they switched up their plays, the Foxes blocked and denied and blocked and denied.

At halftime, the score was 5-2 in the Foxes' favor but Andrew couldn't keep playing. His withdrawal was crawling up his throat and he quickly took his medication, not really caring about the outcome of that night's game and just wanting to get back to Palmetto State.

* * *

Lola Malcolm is dead. Romero Malcolm is dead. Jackson Plank is dead. Three of the many major demons in Nathaniel's life, are dead. Nathan Wesninski is close to it, too. 

"Please- please **stop** ," he begged from where he was tied to a chair, his dead mistress not ten feet away from him. Nathaniel gave his father the smile-not-smile that he'd been on the receiving end of so many times over so many years. His mother's family along with his twin and younger brother was behind him. His Lord still hadn't moved from where he stood near the front of the room, where he watched as his Whore and his Whore's siblings killed some of his father's best men. The thought made Nathaniel smug to no end.

"I think I'll put you out of your pathetic life soon enough. But first, tell them, father." Nathaniel said as he walked around his father's chair, a knife aimed at his throat at all times. Nathan paled under the knife. "Tell them what? How fun it was to watch you cry and scream over your mother's headless corpse when you were seven before bringing you here?" Nathaniel pressed the knife harder against his father's throat and wrung out a strangled cry from the older man.

"No. **Tell** them. Tell them what _really_ went on in our Baltimore mansion."

Stuart took a cautious step forward. "What the fuck do you mean, Nathaniel?"

Ichirou looked on with a newfound interest, having looked bored before the exchange.

"I was four," Nathaniel stated. "Go on, Nathan. Finish the story. They're going to learn the truth about you tonight either way."

"What truth?" Nicholas asked from beside his uncle. 

"Just how disgusting this monster right here is, brother," when Nathan said nothing Nathaniel tsked his tongue. "I was four and my father started running a little sex circle, you could say. Go on, father. Continue."

Disgust and anger rolled out of the other side of the room like a tsunami. Knives and guns were pointed at Nathan. The Butcher of Baltimore didn't continue. Nathaniel dragged his knife across his father's throat and stabbed him in his thigh, dragging a scream out of him. Nathaniel chuckled. He could vaguely hear the buzzer down below, marking the beginning of the game. 

His father's screams sounded better, though. 

Nathaniel walked back towards his mother's family. He sheathed his knife and took out his semi-automatic and aimed it at his father after attaching a silencer to it. 

"Leave his heart and head. Free reign everywhere else," he commanded the Hatfords and their allies from the United Kingdom. Beside him, Natalie chuckled, "Is cruelty such as this a special of yours, Abram?" "Only for those who deserve such." "Good."

Muffle shots rang out as they were unloaded from their barrels. Blood flew out of Nathan's body and he slumped in his seat, dead when one of Nathaniel's bullets pierced his heart. He took his silencer off of his gun and put the safety on. 

"Good riddance," Stuart muttered. 

_Good riddance, indeed_ Nathaniel thought as he walked back to his Lord's side, blood soaking his suit.

"Nathaniel, go to your room and pack your belongings. When the Palmetto State Foxes leave, your siblings will be going with them. You will also, be going with them." Ichirou said, "Your uncle and I have made a deal. A deal in which I let them, along with you, to kill your father and his allies while also allowing you out of the Nest and your contract with Edgar Allan."

Nathaniel looked from Ichirou to his uncle to his siblings then back to Ichirou. "Our deal, my Lord?" He asked in Japanese. "I will continue to grant Kevin Day and Jean Moreau my protection and in return, you will come to wherever I tell you to for holidays and breaks. Do you understand?" "Yes, my Lord." 

Ichirou nodded at him so Nathaniel left, using one of the back entrances where he could get out discreetly, his siblings following after him. 

"Nate, wait!" Nicholas called out. 

"No, Andras."

"Abram, **please** , stop," Natalie said.

"I don't like that word, Ava-May. And I have to go." 

Suddenly two gray-eyed people were in front of him, their arms outstretched. "We're sorry, Nate. We never thought- we knew he was bad what we never thought he'd do-" 

"No you didn't think, did you?" Nathaniel

"We're so sorry. I'm sorry. We should've- they should've looked for you, sooner. We knew you were still alive when we first got there but mo- Mary refused to let them. I'm so sorry, Abram." Natalie was crying now. 

"I don't need or want your pity."

"We know," Andras said. "But, we want to know if you're okay and if- if we could be a family again?"

Nathaniel looked them in the eyes as he rolled up the sleeves of his suit, showing his cuts and forearms brands. "I am the furthest from 'okay' I've ever been," he said, allowing them a bit of truth. The two Hatfords looked at his arms then back at him, terrified. "As for the family matter, that depends. Are the two of you worth it? Are you worth my protection and trust?" The pair nodded and Nathaniel raised an eyebrow, pulling down his sleeves. "What do you mean, protection?" Ava-May asked.

"I protect Kevin Day and Jean Moreau by acting as a translater for the Main Branch. I could add the two of you to it and, if anyone hurts the two of you beyond Exy-related injuries, they have to answer to them." Again, the pair nodded their heads. 

"How do we gain your trust?" "I don't know, Andras. Rescue me in times of great peril perhaps." Nathaniel was trying to joke--and failing miserably--but his younger brother seemed to take him seriously.

"We can come with you, to pack your things."

"No. I'll be fine. Besides, we all have to get cleaned up."

"Okay."

"Okay."

Nathaniel went through the familiar and claustrophobic black halls that were always too dark and too cold. The thought that he was getting out, getting **let go** was surreal. A pipe dream, the hiraeth he felt for whatever it was outside the Nest was almost unbearable.

When he got to his and Riko's shared dorm--the idea was still vile enough to make him nauseous--he went into the attached bathroom and shed his bloody suit. He didn't know how long he spent in the shower at the time but when he got out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist Riko, Saunders, and Miller were in his room. Nathaniel stilled.

"Now Nathaniel, where do you think you're going?" Riko asked, gesturing to Nathaniel's bag that held some of Nathaniel's clothes.

"I'm leaving."

"Without saying goodbye?" Saunder taunted.

Nathaniel swallowed, "Don't you have a game to go back to?" 

"It's half-time. And your precious little Foxes are _beating_ us. So tell us, Nathaniel, why the **fuck** did you give them the counter-backs to our plays?" Miller stepped forward causing Nathaniel to step back, back into the bathroom where he was cornered. 

"Be- because there's nothing you can do to me that you haven't done before. I'm not scared of you, Riko Moriyama."

Riko smiled dangerously, a dark and vicious gleam in his dark eyes. "You should be." He whistled and Saunders and Miller walked closer, Barns and Fox and other Ravens Nathaniel once knew, once _trained_ , walked in. 

"Riko- please, you can't do this."

"I can, Nathaniel. And you should know by now that I will." Nathaniel looked for something, anything, that he could use against his attackers and found nothing. He threw his fists first, then his legs, and when his towel fell and hands began touching him, he tried yelling. Hands clamped down on his mouth, a cloth was put over his face, water was dumped on him. He spluttered and gasped and fought but too many people, too many hands, held him down. A sharp pinch on both elbow joints followed by the familiar burn of speedballs sent him flying. The familiar sting of knives cutting across his skin and the warm flow of blood tainted his skin. 

"Hurry up, we have five minutes left. We can come back and finish what we started afterward." The few birds who were still around stopped touching him and instead began hitting him, one hit true on his temple and Nathaniel wavered on his feet before falling, naked and bloody on the floor of his dorm. 

Riko Moriyama laughed as he stepped over Nathaniel's half-conscious body on the floor before kicking him in the head and knocking him unconscious before walking out of the room and locking it behind him.

* * *

Turns out, little broken birds are useful after all. 

The Ravens were losing 5-2 at the start of halftime but with Renee and Stow in goal, and Gordon and Arthur and Johnson tired, the three-point lead the Foxes had over the Ravens quickly turned into an eight-point gap in the Ravens' favor. 

The Foxes tried, they had gone over the counter-backs again during halftime but even those weren't enough to keep the Ravens back. 

Rameriez kept letting his marks pass while Boyd was running himself ragged trying to keep up with Riko. The Ravens had a renewed energy to them when they returned from the fifteen-minute break, a sort of energy that left Andrew, manic as he was, reeling. He reached for his knives and cursed out the ERC and Wymack and everyone else who forced him to leave them on the bus.

The Ravens receives four red cards in just the third quarter and when it was time to switch out the players for the fourth, it was a slaughterhouse. The Ravens came back with their second wind and starters while the Foxes were running low on energy and couldn't hold them off for much longer. Putting Stow in the goal instead of somewhere on the defensive line was the worst thing Wymack or Moreau or Day could've done that night. 

The Ravens won 17-6.

* * *

Nathaniel woke up to hands-on his waist. He opened his eyes and was only able to make out his offender's silhouettes but from the sound of their voices and the feel of their calluses, he knew it was Saunders and Miller. They stood him up and touched him more, made him hate the feeling of hands-on him more.

Voices rang from down the hall and Saunders and Miller froze. 

"He's probably in my old room," a familiar voice said. A voice with a deep, southern French accent. **Jean**.

"Jeanie!" Nathaniel weakly called out. A hand covered his mouth. The footsteps--more than one pair--grew louder as they grew closer. 

"Abram?" Jean's voice was right outside his door, on the other side of the hall where ~~his~~ their old dorm was. Nathaniel kicked Saunders in the balls, the little strength he had, he had saved for that moment. The moment he had to fight back.

"Fuck!" Saunders called out while Miller's grip tightened on Nathaniel's body. The doorknob on the door jiggled as someone tried to open the door. "Nate?" Kevin's voice said. Nathaniel yelled against Miller's hand, "I'm here!"

A loud bang against the locked door--the only room without a lock on it was Nathaniel's before the door came off its hinges, that is--pulled Miller's attention long enough for Nathaniel to be able to pull one of his arms out of the older man's grasp and punch him in the jaw, causing him to let go of Nathaniel completely as he stumbled back a few steps.

Nathaniel's new cuts, still bleeding, stung as he ran across--as well as he could with a limp--to the other side of the room where he grabbed a bunch of clothes and his stuffed fox that he'd had since he was a child and stuffed him them all into his bag. He was in the process of dragging a black sweatshirt over his after he'd put a pair of sweatpants he found in one of his few drawers when two pair of hands wrapped around him. One his face, covering his mouth, the other pair took his arms making him unable to land any more hits.

"HELP!" He yelled against large hands, his weak voice muffled.

"Abram, I'm coming, fuck, I'm coming Abram. Just have to- there!" Natalie said, her voice was heavy with tears, Nathaniel would tell. 

A _click_ rang through the room and was followed by the sound of the door opening and shouting not even a second later. Knives flew, attaching both Miller and Saunders to the wall by corners of their clothes, but not before several hits were landed to Nathaniel's head, blurring his vision and his hearing.

Nathaniel fell to the floor, darkness taking over once again.

* * *

Natalie was scared. She didn't get scared easily but when the Foxes returned from the court and went to the showers and Nathaniel still hadn't shown up, she began to worry. When Jean and Kevin had joined her and Nicholas, she expressed her worries and her brother had, unsurprisingly, agreed with her. 

Jean's calm expression had hardened and Kevin's eyes had glowed with ire. They told Wymack they were going to go looking for him and after his approval, the group was rushing through the dark halls. 

The dorms were, of course, on the other side of the Nest. They ran as fast as they could occasionally taking very brief breaks for breaths of air. Jean brought them to the Red Hall where apparently, the Perfect Court used to sleep while growing up. Kevin had said on the way over to Evermore was that the Ravens slept in the Black Hall, on the opposite end of one of the many halls in the dark labyrinth. 

When they had gotten to Jean's older dorm which he had shared with Abram, though, it was almost empty with no door on the hinges and one of the beds was covered with dried blood and sweat.

"Jeanie!" They'd heard from across the hall. Kevin's gaze went across the hall. 

"Abram?" Natalie called out in front of the door. A loud, "Fuck!" was heard from inside and Kevin called out to him. "Nate?"

"I'm here!" Was the return.

Nicholas pulled at the doorknob. It didn't open. Natalie threw her entire weight into the door. Nothing more than a loud thud. Thuds and grunts and curses from several people came from inside. 

Natalie pulled away from the door and looked at Jean. "Do any of you have a bobby pin or- or something that I can pick the lock with?" 

The two ex-Ravens looked thoughtful. "Nate might have something in our old room," Jean said before he turned around and went into his old room. He looked through a bunch of knick-knacks that must be small things that were collected over the many years the room housed the two boys. 

The bed on the left side of the room was Natalie's main focus, though. "Was that Abram's bed?" She asked. Jean stopped in his frantic search and looked at her, a solemn and guarded look in his gray eyes as he nodded his head. "It wasn't like that when we left. HE must've-Riko must've- Fuck!" He yelled as he continued searching. 

"Jean?" Andras asked, taking a cautious step forward. "It's all my fault. It's all **our** fault," he muttered before continuing to say something in Dutch.

"Found it!" Kevin called out after too long, Natalie took it from her brother's friend and ran across the hall with it, and picked the knife. She kicked the door open and threw the knives she'd had clasped in her hand, hitting true and embedding themselves into two guy's clothing and the wall.

Nathaniel dropped to the floor, his eyes closed and bleeding. "Nate!" Jean called out, running to him and cradling him in his arms and Natalie wondered, for a moment, if their relationship was more than the platonic and brotherly relationship they made it seem like they had earlier.

"Get his bag," Jean ordered Nicholas who nodded and took the few bags and carried them. "Well, look who the fag dragged it," One of the Ravens attached the wall said. Natalie's eyes went to him immediately and she approached him, another knife in her hands that she held up the older man's throat. "What the **fuck** did you just call him?" The man laughed, "A faggot. A whore. He's rather great at being both those things."

Natalie brought her knife across his face and he screamed. A mild cut was now present on the right side of his face from his cheekbone to his chin. The dark crimson liquid flowed from it and down his neck, staining his chest red. "Say anything to him again, and I'll give you a twin scar on the left side of your face," she spat at him, deadly venom soaking her tone.

"Nat, let's go," her younger brother called out to her. She sighed and followed after him, who was following Kevin who was trailing behind an anxious Jean carrying an unconscious Nathaniel. "Is he going to be okay?" Kevin asked, his eyes were weary, darting across the black halls as if looking for a threat. "We have to get him to Abby first," Jean said. 

They walked through the halls, the red lights overhead flashing and for Nicholas and Natalie, weapons drawn. When they finally saw the Away locker rooms, they started running. Kevin opened the door and Wymack turned towards them, various other Foxes turned towards them as well, or the bundle of black in Jean's arms, more specifically. 

"Everyone ready to go?" Nick asked. 

Coach Wymack shook his head. "We're still waiting on Stow and Rameriez, but I'll stay here and wait for them. The rest of you, go to the bus. Abby can look at him there."

"Is he okay?" Matt asked once they were out of the Nest and on the way to the bus.

"Let's check and see, shall we?" Abby asked.

"In the back," Jean said and took him to the back before sitting in what Natalie has come to learn as Andrew's seat. "Get out of my seat," Andrew said with a deathly calm. Jean looked the blond in the eyes, "No." The midget scowled but didn't say anything else and took a seat in the middle. Natalie quickly followed the sophomore Raven-transfer and sat in the seat across the aisle from him. Nicholas and Kevin and the Foxes' nurse followed. She put a sweatshirt up to cover Nate from everyone else's view as she took off his sweatshirt and inhaled a sharp breath.

"Fuck," Andras muttered. 

Abby called through the sweatshirt to Aaron, who, apparently was a pre-med student. 

"Aaron, could you get me my first aid kit? And the stitch kit, too." There was a grunt and the sound of someone getting out of their seat and when two boxes came through and hazel eyes filled with curiosity tried to look, Natalie closed the "curtain" in his face.

"Bitch," Aaron muttered. 

"Asshole."

Abby sighed and just thanked him through it before taking disinfecting Nathaniel's numerous cuts, careful to not apply too much pressure as to not break the already obviously broken ribs that show through his too-pale skin. He's nothing more than skin and bones, Natalie realizes. She had thought before that her brother's slim fingers were just that, slim and nimble fingers, and not his fingers just beneath the surface of his skin, no muscle or fat in between. 

"No, dude, the redhead is fucking useless. He gave us plays that had us in but then they slaughtered us. I'm telling you, Set. Up," A voice said, Natalie had come to associate its gruffness for Reggie Stow said. "Reg, shut up. Those weapon-carrying-physcos with him won't like that," Damien Rameriez said. 

"Hey Druggies, y'all wanna do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up? Thank you!" Nicholas said with fake enthusiasm. A snarl was her younger brother's reply who looked ready to go through the sweatshirt-curtain but Natalie held out her hand and shook her head. It would do them no good to start trouble, especially not right now. Not when their brother needed them.

The bus was well on its way, steadily out of the Castle Evermore and off of the Edgar Allan University campus, the black and red buildings long gone with the wind with hundreds of miles of water and land and air between them and Nathaniel's personal hell, when a pained groan came from her twin’s lips and his hand twitched. 

From the seat in front of them—because she had to move for Abby—Natalie could see the way he stilled. Jean muttered something in soft Dutch while running his fingers through his hair and how he eased into the touch and relaxed a little. Kevin had assured her earlier that the pair had nothing more than a strong brotherly bond. That Jean had been with Nate for almost seven years and they looked out for each other.

Nate kept Jean safe and Jean kept Nate out of as much trouble as he could.

Natalie had taken a mental note then to thank Jean for everything, for being there for her twin when she couldn’t, she reinforced said mental note seeing the two of them. 

“Where am I?” Nate asked. His voice was soft and quiet, weak. Abby looked up from the cut she was currently stitching together after she had disinfected it, “You’re on the Foxes’ bus. We’re taking you back with us to Palmetto State University. You’ll be able to heal there. Is that okay?”

”Yes,” Nathaniel breathed.

Abby smiled and some of the tension in her shoulders dispersed. 

Her twin’s blue eyes were beginning to open and Jean lifted his head a bit to see his surroundings. To ensure his safety. Abram relaxed some more.

Natalie smiled at her twin when icy blue met stormy gray. He nodded his head in acknowledgement. He raised an auburn eyebrow when his eyes landed on the sweatshirt laying across the aisle and seats. 

“Privacy curtain,” Natalie told him. He nodded. 

“I trust you,” her older brother said in Polish.

Nicholas’ smile was bright and wide from his seat behind them and Natalie knew that she had the same expression on her own cherry colored lips.

They weren’t anything yet. Acquaintances, if not strangers, but looking at her two brothers who once rarely left her side, Natalie thought.

 _M_ _aybe, one day, we could be a family again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our boy is finally free and reunited with his family, oh my. Of course, a lot of shit had to go down in order for it to happen but he's out now. 
> 
> So um, thoughts on it? Should I have made Nate suffer more? Less? LMK in the comments!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! See y'all next week.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel adjusts to his life outside of the Nest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary pretty much sums up (ha) the chapter but we get outside perspectives as well!! 
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> mentions of past child abuse / torture, homophobic language, mentions of past self-harm, dubious consent that borderlines on rape (it’s not explicit but it’s there).

Nathaniel woke up with a heavy head and a hand tangled with his. He opened his eyes and saw bright lights—sunlight—streaming in through beige curtains and he tensed immediately. 

_This isn’t the Nest_ , he thought.

No, this was the opposite of it. Beige curtains barely withholding sunlight from coming into the white room with a painting of the moon and stars on the wall, black furniture placed throughout the room, and only one bed. 

This isn’t the first time Nathaniel had woken up in a bed that wasn’t his but it was the first time he’d seen sunlight in the morning... or was it afternoon?

A squeeze to his left hand pulled him out of his assessment of the room. 

“Hey,” Jean greeted him, a soft smile danced on his lips. Nathaniel’s reply was a hand squeeze. “You feeling okay? You’ve been out for a while.”

“How long?”

A shrug. “About a day or so. You passed out back out on the bus. Abby said it’s most likely from whatever drug Riko put you on and dehydration... and malnourishment.”

“I can’t say much to everything else but he had me on speedballs,” Nathaniel replied. Jean’s jaw clenched and he nodded. Nathaniel looked down at their entwined hand and he noticed that his wrists were wrapped in bandages. 

Nathaniel tensed, he didn’t want Jean to see them. To see what the Ravens—and himself—did to him after he left. He knew his brother would be feeling guilty, especially if he saw the state that their former room was in with the bloody sheets and no-door. It wasn’t his fault, though, and Nathaniel would spend the rest of his days assuring Jean that if he had to.

Jean followed his line of sight. “Nate-,” he began and squeezed his hand again. “I’m so sorry. This was all my fault if I didn’t leave-,” “Shut up,” the younger man interrupted. “This is **not** your fault, understand? This is Riko’s fault, and Tetsuji’s fault, and my fault. Not yours. Never yours.” The few sentences came out in breaths only a little louder than whispers.

Jean sighed and met his eyes, Nathaniel looked away, ashamed.

Jean’s fingers grasped his chin lightly, light enough that if he needed or wanted to, he could get away and out of his grasp. Nathaniel didn’t move and met his eyes.

”This isn’t your fault, either.” Jean told him, his voice strong and firm and final.

"Isn't it, though?" Nathaniel asked. " **I** told the two of you to leave, **I** made the deals and **I'm** the one who cut because I wanted to feel something and be in control of _**one**_ _**thing** _in my life. I'm sorry, Jeanie."

Jean squeezed his chin lightly and kissed his forehead that was slick with sweat, he murmured against it. "You have nothing to be sorry for, brother. Without you, I can't imagine what would've happened to me in there. I can't imagine what happened to _you_ in there." Nathaniel shrugged, "Nothing that hadn't been done to me before." Jean pulled away and frowned. "I hate that. I hate this. I hate that you think what happened to you was okay because it happened before."

Nathaniel's brows knitted together in confusion and Jean sighed and got up.

"Nevermind." 

"Where are you going?" Nathaniel whined. He just got his brother back and he wanted to be with him a few moments longer. 

"I have to talk to Abby. She'll be in here soon."

Nathaniel nodded and sunk back into his bed, though it's not as if he had much of a choice in what to do. He closed his eyes but quickly opened them back up as a shake startled through his body and he was struck with bile rising in his throat which he swallowed. A knock on the door sounded, echoing in the semi-empty room. "Come in?" The door opened and Abby walked in carrying a white case that's assumably filled with bandages and varying medicines. "Hi, Nathaniel. Is it okay if I call you that or would you prefer Nate or another nickname?" "Abram." The nurse smiled and nodded, “Is it okay if I check your stitches? And your ribs? And other vitals?" He nodded and she came over and got to work carefully unwrapping the bandages all over his body.

”You don’t have to tell me or anyone how you got these injuries or what happened at Evermore, but if you ever want or need to talk to anyone, we’re here for you, Abram. Okay? Me, and David, and Betsy, and even some of the Foxes. You’re one of us, now.”

Nathaniel blinked in surprise and Abby smiled sadly. He didn’t know what to do with this, this kindness. He knew that eventually they would realize how fucked up and broken and worthless he was and would throw him out. That he’d most likely be sent back to the Nest if he did anything that they didn’t like. He knew that he didn’t earn his spot on the team, that it was given to him as part of a deal he made with the Coach who made him uneasy due to his age. 

He **knows** he’s worthless.

”You don’t want me. You won’t.”

”We do, Abram. We want you and all your scars and baggage and anything else you have that makes you think we don’t want you, but we do. We want your family, too. Your brothers, and your sister, and you. We want _all_ of you.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “No. Soon, you’ll realize that I’m more trouble than I’m worth and that I’m too broken to be here. To be a Fox. Then you’ll get rid of me.” Abby smiled again, more maternal and loving before and it left a feeling in Nathaniel’s chest that made him warm and fuzzy. “I promise you, Abram, that I will do whatever I have to do to prove you wrong, okay? **You** are _worth it,_ Abram. Okay? I promise.”

Nathaniel didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand how she could promise such a huge thing after just meeting him—though they’d met before—he knew he was setting himself up for disappointment. He knew he was setting himself up for pain and hurt like none other he’d ever experienced, but somehow, he didn’t care. He didn’t care if this promise—which was most likely an empty promise which she and the rest of the Foxes would break without a second thought—would be his breaking point. If this empty promise was the thing to finally send him over the edge and make him end it all. He didn’t care. 

Nathaniel nodded and Abby smiled genuinely.

He decided then that he liked it when Abby smiled and that he’d do whatever he had to do for her to do it more.

When Abby was done and on her way out of the room she turned around. “I mean it, Abram when I said that we’re here for you.” Nathaniel nodded, “Can you send my sister in if she’s out there?” 

“Of course.”

* * *

Natalie saw him lying there, shaking and sweating, and with his blue eyes barely open after Abby had told her that he wanted to see her. She would deny until her last breath if she had to if she was asked what she felt when the sentence left Abby’s lips. She’d say that she didn’t feel anything special and that she definitely didn’t get a warm sense of purpose and love and the need to protect.

Those who were in that room, though: Jean, Kevin, Matt, Dan, Renee, Allison, Nicky, Aaron, Andrew, and Nicholas would—most likely—say that they saw the large smile that bloomed over her face and how her gray eyes lit up. 

She didn’t know why they all stayed. Andrew seemed interested in her twin enough to not go back to Fox Tower when they got back to the Foxhole Court and instead left with most of the team to go to Abby’s house. She had asked Dan earlier when they were still waiting for him to wake up why she and the rest of “her crew” stayed behind. 

“Because you and your brothers are Foxes now, and we look after our own,” she had said.

Natalie would lie until the day she died that she didn’t internally celebrate that she and Nicholas finally had people their age—or around their age, somewhat—who they could trust and look after and know that their backs would be protected in return.

She knew how she appeared, with her curly blonde hair and light gray eyes that can radiate love or scream violence in an instant. She knows that the track marks on her arms from her adventurous teen years most likely threw others off-guard. She knows that her anger issues make others wary of her, she knows that others know who her father is and how he’s rather notorious, even in London, and how she never had many friends due to it. Even thousands of miles and an ocean away, Nathan Wesninski still had some control over her life. 

She hated him for it. She hated him when she was five and taken away from her twin. She hated her mother for not taking Nathaniel. “It’s too late for him,” she had told her and Nicholas on the plane when they were over the Atlantic Ocean. 

Natalie Ava-May Wesninski-Hatford hated her father eight years ago when she got her twin’s death certificate for her tenth birthday. 

She ~~hated~~ loathed the Butcher of Baltimore that night in the East Tower at Castle Evermore when she learned that her brother, her twin, and protector for so many years, was the victim of an underground sex-ring and he was locked in a room for hours-on-end with known sexual predators and prostitutes and pedophiles.

”Ava-May?” Her twin asked. She blinked and realized her face was warm with anger and her fists were clenched. Natalie shook her head, “Sorry,” she muttered. Abram reached his hand out to take her fist and he wrapped his sweat-coated hand around hers. 

“Abram,” She greeted and sat down in the chair beside his bed. “What- I have so many questions.” Natalie raked her eyes down her brother’s bandaged form and made a mental promise to hurt everyone who ever laid a finger in him. 

“You can’t hurt that many people, Ava. Even if you had a shit ton of enforcers working with you,” Nathaniel said. Natalie’s face turned an embarrassing shade of crimson. Her brother huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh or chuckle at another time, in another life.

“So your many questions? Fire away... maybe.”

“Okay, first question: what do the characters on your forearms mean?”

Nathaniel sucked in a breath. “I have four and they all mean different things. One of them means worthless, one means faggot, another means whore, and the last one means traitor.”

Natalie tensed and clenched her jaw.

”You’re none of those things,” she insisted but her brother shrugged. “In Riko’s eyes, I am.” 

Her voice was hard as she said, “I don’t care what you are in Riko’s eyes, okay? You are my brother, my twin. You are not worthless. You are not a traitor. You are not a faggot. And you are **not** a whore. I don’t care how many people you’ve slept with—or their gender—you are not a whore.”

”You don’t know me,” he spat. Both twins froze, Nathaniel’s eyes were wide and Natalie’s throat was dry. 

“Nat-“

”You’re right.”

”No, I’m not.”

”But you are, Abram. We haven’t seen each other in thirteen years and for eight of those, we thought the other was dead. We’re siblings by blood but we don’t know anything about the other.”

”We could.. try? I miss my sister, Ava-May.”

Salty tears prickled behind her gray eyes, threatening to overflow as she blinked and smiled. “Me too, Abram.” The tears escaped and landed on their joined hands. “I missed you so much,” she whispered. Her voice cracked and was full of emotion.

Nathaniel squeezed her hand and Natalie knew.

She knew that they’d be okay.

* * *

The little bird had woken up earlier that morning and since then, the Foxes who stayed had been abuzz with excitement and worry. Andrew found the entire thing rather trivial but Nicky wanted to stay because, for some reason, the bastard wanted to get to know the ex-Raven—is he even an ex-Raven? Or is he an ex-future-Raven?—and Andrew wasn’t about to let him stay alone with the older Foxes, even if they did answer his questions back in the fall.

Nicholas’ leg was bouncing up-and-down anxiously as he—assumably—waited for his older brother to call for him. Kevin and Jean sat on each side of him, quietly conversing in French. Jean's hand grabbed the younger man's knee and whispered something to him in French which made him swallow and nod. 

All the other lost causes were scattered around the room doing various things. The girls were in the kitchen with Wilds' little dog at her side, Andrew's idiots were laid across the couches and appeared half-asleep when Natalie finally came back down the hall, her gray eyes red and puffy. She motioned for her younger brother and they conversed briefly in Polish in the hall before the latter continued into Nathaniel's designated room while the former took her brother's seat between the two former Ravens.

Nicky sat up at Natalie's sad—is that what it was?—expression on her face. "Are you okay?" He asked, always the nosy one. Natalie looked up from her hands in her lap and the former birdies directed their attention to his cousin, alert. "I'm fine," she sniffed and Andrew rolled his eyes. The little birdies did as well. Jean began muttering something about twins being similar which Andrew—as a twin—took personal offense to. 

"Has he always been a self-sacrificing asshole?" A deep British accent asked from across the room. The group looked up and saw Nicholas whose face was red with anger? Oh, how interesting for a little fuckup like him to be so _angry._

Natalie sighed, Jean choked out a laugh, and Kevin huffed. ~~Interesting little birdies, indeed.~~

"Self-sacrificing? Definitely always. Asshole? Occasionally," Jean said and Kevin nodded his agreement. The youngest Hatford—or is it Wesininski?—rolled his eyes. 

"What'd he do?" Nicky asked. Andrew wondered idly for a moment if he could shut up.

"He's all like, 'Oh this? HA, it's nothing!' and is acting like whatever happened to him happened every day and he's used to it!"

Nicky frowned then suggested, "Maybe he's just having a hard time processing everything? It seemed like a lot happened and I can't imagine it being easy, the adjustment." The other Nicholas seemed to consider this for a moment then looked over at Day and Moreau. 

"Is it? Normal for him to get beatings and other shit like that?"

The two nodded. 

"Is it too late—or early—to bring Riko Moriyama to his grave?" Natalie asked, idly waving a knife through her slim fingers.

Andrew was going to have to find out where she stored them so he'd never be caught off-guard and would be able to protect what's his, he met Renee's gaze from the kitchen and knew she was thinking the same.

Kevin blanched from beside the blonde. "What?" 

She side-glanced at him through narrow, gray eyes.

"You heard me."

"You- nevermind."

* * *

Nathaniel had spent the rest of January at Abby's house and saw how the Foxes crash and burned through the first round of the spring season. They were out of championships before their death-match.

His ribs and cuts were healing better than any other injury he'd ever sustained in his many years at the Nest. Though he almost fainted when he found out he was banned from the court until his ribs were fully healed. He remembered how Abby and Jean had both told him that he'd be able to heal while at Palmetto State but him being banned from the court was the first time he actually realized that he _is_ able to heal. 

The idea of healing delivered a warm feeling in his chest that Nathaniel decided he didn't hate. 

The team's physiatrist, Betsy Dobson as she was called, came in to see him one day to see if he wanted to talk. 

"I don't talk to shrinks," he'd said. The shrink had just gently smiled at him and understanding had stood clearly in her light eyes. "That's okay," she had said. "You don't have to talk to me, not yet, or ever, aside from our mandatory appointments once a semester."

The thought of having mandatory sessions with a shrink made Nathaniel's skin crawl. So instead, he nodded and rolled his eyes when only a short while later Jean had come in and reprimanded him for refusing help from a professional. 

"You know damn well why I won't."

Jean had sighed and nodded and left after that to get Nathaniel a smoothie, some of the little categories of food that he'd eat without protest, especially if Jean made it. When one of the older Foxes had asked Jean--according to him--why I didn't eat most of the food they offered to bring by he'd merely said I had "trust issues" with food. The statement made Nathaniel scoff but he knew that Jean was right. He'd been drugged too many times in the past via food and drink for him to trust food offered to him by others.

Well, the two Ravens who kept him fed over winter break were an exception but the food and drink they'd given him had been in wrappers and unopened.

The months continued on like that, with Nathaniel healing and when he was cleared by Abby, he spent almost every waking moment at the Foxhole Court and walking around the PSU campus, familiarizing himself with it. Sometimes Natalie and Nicholas would come with him or Jean and Kevin.

The Hatford-Wesninski children had grown much closer in the few months that they'd spent with their team nurse. Stuart had called them mid-February and the trio had decided to change their names and get rid of the "association" with the Wesninski's... somewhat. 

They'd kept their middle names, legally changed their last name to Hatford, and changed their first name. Nathaniel Abram Wesninski became Neil Abram Hatford, Natalie Ava-May Wesninski-Hatford became Natasha Ava-May Hatford and Nicholas Andras Wesninski-Hatford became Nikolai Andras Hatford. 

For the first time in a long, long time, Neil Abram Hatford felt safe and--somewhat--content and as he belonged.

He shouldn't have been so surprised when everything went to shit.

It was May and the Ravens had announced that Kevin, Neil, and Jean were no longer going to join the lineup that coming fall. It hadn’t necessarily bothered Neil, minus the fact that they’d used his former name.

Spring break happened and due to Neil being fully healed, he was called to New York to “serve” his Lord. The light feeling that Neil had been feeling in those last few months that he was away from the Nest disappeared as soon as he felt the familiar feel of the concrete under his feet and the sting of forced penetration as Ichirou pinned him to the bed and took him apart carelessly and kissed him breathless.

The heavy feel of Ichirou’s hand on his hips that night at they laid in bed—Neil’s back to his Lord’s front—made his muscles tense and his skin crawl.

He didn’t sleep that night or any other night he spent with Ichirou, so, when he returned to Palmetto at the end of the week, his eyes hooded and shadowed and his head heavy and clouded.

”There’s no point in you doing anything for him anymore, Neil. We're away from Riko and we're away from the Nest. Why don’t you just- _stop_?” Jean had asked him that night when they were curled up vertically in bed—for they were both used to and comforted by the weight of the other next to them in the bed—and had handed Neil his calming tea with jasmine and chamomile and a little bit of cannabis—it helps with his nerves and nightmares, okay? His family, along with Abby and strangely some of the older Foxes, had fussed over him when he first walked through the door huddled into himself. They, thankfully, didn’t push him to share anything about his break as they shared theirs but they made sure he ate—Neil was thankful that they only fed him what he’d deemed “safe” and had cooked his meals in front of him—before sending him off to bed for the night with several blankets, his tea, and his former partner (The two had decided to not call themselves partners anymore because they were so much more than that: friends, brothers, family).

Neil had shrugged the question off and replied, “We might be free if the Nest, but Riko’s hold is still strong. I **need** the deal to make sure you and Kev and Ava-May and Andras are safe and out of his reach.”

Jean sighed heavily but left it at that and instead laid down on his side and shortly after finishing his tea, Neil followed him into the dark land of unconsciousness and had a dreamless sleep.

It was a decent return, Neil decided, and he wouldn’t really mind if he was treated that way whenever he returned from New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite idiot is slowly (VERY slowly) starting to heal and trust others and that makes my heart so happy.
> 
> I love all the new relationships he’s forming (or re-forming). I promise I'll write more about the Foxes in detail next chapter.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer begins, Neil starts bonding with the upperclassmen + Nicky, and Natasha (and the other Foxes, minus Jean + Kevin) learn new things about her twin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So um I don't really know what to write for notes besides to thank y'all for reading and leaving kudos and comments, it means a lot to me. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: brief mention of Andrew's time in foster care (I'm going to change a few things about his canon past), mention of past child abuse, past mass homicide (murder), mention of past bomb explosion, scars, past childhood sexual abuse (Nathan's sex circle), etc. (Basically just Neil's past), drug overdose (and death from said overdose)

It was May before Andrew realized it and he was dropping Nicky off at the airport so he can fly to Germany for the short break the Foxes were granted before summer practices started within a few weeks while he and Aaron stayed in Palmetto at Abby's. This, of course, forced the ex-Ravens to be confined to two rooms instead of the three that they'd been staying in the past few months. 

There was still the matter of him not trusting said ex-Ravens or the British Hatfords but, Andrew supposed, this was a good time to get to know them. Of course, he'd promised both Abby and Wymack that he wouldn't take any of them to Colombia until after practice for the next season started back up but well, he never said anything about questioning them here in Palmetto, did he? No, but Andrew also guessed that Abby would be even more upset if he did his... _interrogation session_ at her house.

Andrew sighed and flicked the cigarette bud against the wooden deck. The glass door opened and when Andrew looked behind him, he saw the blonde Hatford girl that put Andrew on edge with her stormy gray eyes that promised danger and a too-sweet smile yet calm demeanor. He couldn't help but compare her to Renee and he thought that she was very similar to the pastel-dyed goalkeeper.

"Oh, hello. I didn't see you out here," Natasha--why she changed her name to that, Andrew could only guess--said sweetly as she closed the sliding door behind her. Andrew surveyed his surroundings and saw several exit points where he could escape if she showed a threat to him. He **_definitely_** wasn't intimidated by her, oh no, not at all.

Andrew didn't reply and took another drag from his cancer stick, his eyes not leaving the blonde as she made her way to stand next to Andrew with enough space between them for him to not be as tense as he could've been.

"What have you been wanting to ask me?" The younger woman asked. Andrew turned to her, confused. He had barely spoken to her in the last six months that she's been occupying the nurse's house, and he didn't particularly plan to anytime soon san when he planned to take her and her twin's "crew" to Columbia once practice started back up,

"Your face. You've been looking at me and my brothers like we're a threat for the last several months. You also look like you want to ask something so, ask. Whatever it is and I'll answer it to the best of my ability. Her British accent was strong as she said it like she was so certain. Andrew didn't like that she could see that.

He scoffed, "And how, pray tell, would you know that? I've barely looked at any of you, though I do have questions." Andrew knew he was telling a half-truth. He'd been suspicious of the Hatford lot from the beginning when Neil--then Nathaniel--had flinched away from Nicky's hand at the fall banquet and had grimaced at the fruit salad that Kevin had gotten for him, before running his mouth with that smooth British accent of his and being dragged off by a very angry Riko Moriyama. His suspicions didn't cease any bit when Natasha and Nikolai--then Natalie and Nicholas--showed up unannounced at the lounge at the Foxhole Court, where Natasha had thrown a knife at one of the then seniors who had graduated a few short days ago. Nikolai seemed like a more quiet and subdued version of Natasha while Neil was a kicked down puppy--having been abused by almost every person who'd walked into his life-- trying to get up, with the help of his family. Andrew recognized some of himself in Neil when he'd walked into Abby's house at the end of spring break, blue eyes shadowed and hunched in on himself. 

Andrew didn't like that, not one bit. 

Natasha shrugged, "You just have to know where to look." Andrew stopped himself from thinking about how she learned to read people and their moods so well. He stopped himself from thinking about how he learned the same thing during his time in the foster care system before he got himself busted and purposely thrown into juvie.

He took a drag from his cigarette and decided to go for the throat, "Are you and your brothers a threat?" Natasha simply smiled, a shiver was sent down Andrew's spine at how alike the smile was to Renee's smile at times. "That depends. Is anyone here going to cause us any harm?" "No." "Your answer, then. Like you, and Renee, we don't strike without a reason to."

Andrew hated the tinge of respect that began rising in his chest as he looked at the blonde next to him, assessing her, and decided that she was telling the truth. "Okay," he said before grinding his cancer stick between his boot and the wooden deck before going inside and seeing Nikolai and Aaron talking--as much as the two bastards did--at the table while Neil walked around the kitchen, no doubt looking for food he deemed "safe." What was up with that, anyway?

"Where's your large shadow?" He asked the older auburn hair man who practically jumped out of his skin at Andrew's voice. 

"Bathroom," he declared quickly. 

Andrew rolled his hazel orbs at him, "I'm not going to kill you." 

"Never said you were."

"Then don't act like it."

"I'm not."

"You are. You're all fidgety. I don't like fidgety."

The blue orbs looked Andrew up and down before settling back on his face and Andrew would forever deny the shiver that racked his spine at the understanding that had shown in the younger man's eyes. 

"That's just me. Sorry to disappoint."

"Whatever."

 _Whatever indeed_ , Andrew thought as he walked into the living room where, lord and behold, the Son of Exy was watching a recording of the USC Trojans and Edgar Allan Ravens championship game that happened just a few weeks ago. He idly wondered if the former Raven missed being at the Nest, at Castle Evermore, before cutting the idea down as quickly as it grew. Andrew doubted that Day would take kindly to such thoughts seeing as his former partner had broken his hand, almost ending his Exy career.

Said former partner was going insane, from what Andrew could tell from the little that the little birds had sung to the Foxes. Though Andrew guessed, he'd been going insane for a while and he knew that both Hatford and Moreau had the same opinions seeing as whenever Day claimed that Riko wasn't always this bad and that he'd "Been good when we were kids," and Kevin had asked Neil if he remembered Riko being as friendly or positive as the older man had described which Hatford always denied such statements with a hard look in his eyes yet soft voice as he said, "I don't Kev." He always said something to Kevin in Japanese afterward which shut him up and made Moreau's jaw harden underneath his pale complexion.

Andrew needed to find out just what made Day shut up soon if only so he could use it whenever he was ranted to about not caring enough about Exy or trying hard enough in practice. As if Andrew cared for such trivial things.

Andrew also silently swore to himself to figure out just what made Neil Abram Hatford so damn fidgety before the semester started.

* * *

Neil was tired. 

He was tired of having to get up every morning after having not slept due to nightmares of his past coming back to haunt his nights. He was tired of having to have the curtains of his dorm that he shared with his brothers, drawn at all hours of the day to assure himself he was **out** of the Nest, and that the only time he ever had to go back was to play games. 

Neil was also tired of the Foxes not giving a damn about the sport that was paying for their education. Okay, well, it wasn't as much that they didn't give a damn but rather the lack of giving a damn _as a team_. Neil had said as such to Dan who had then asked him what the Ravens did to create their strong correlation and teamwork to which he'd stated that the Partner System is how they did it at the Nest, how you fail together and succeed together and if your partner was punished for something, you were given the same. The Foxes' captain had asked what kind of punishment they would've been given and he said either Riko's wrath--he didn't go into detail, he didn't trust her enough to do so yet--or Tetsuji's cane. Dan's expression had been murderous at the end of it before Neil suggested that the team hung out together and got to know each other because while they'd been playing together for a while, they haven't **actually** been playing _**together.**_

_**He still remembers the first time he walked on the court as an official Fox, he remembered changing out in front of all the guys and the horrified gasps and strangled cries as they took in** **Neil's** **scars on his chest and abdomen and back. He tried not to think of the thousands of small cuts on his back that criss-cross the other, representing how many times men have fucked him against his will, despite his cries and his fruitless attempts at fighting back for the last fourteen years. The orange of the Foxhole Court had begun to grow on him, as Nicky had promised earlier that spring when he'd come to the court to get some practice in once Abby cleared him. Neil had been the best striker out there, easily excelling Andras and Seth--much to the senior's dismay and much to Neil's pleasure--and Kevin had been good, but he was still getting himself acquainted with playing right-handed. After having gotten over a dozen shots in with Andrew in goal, the bastard had started trying. Not that it did him any good, though, since Neil had plowed right through his defense, Matt and Nicky and Ava-May, and scored on Andrew several more times. He had ignored the looks of amazement sent his way by almost everyone and had relinquished in Coach's praise afterward, though Neil never thought he'd ever do such a thing. "We're so going to championships this year!" Allison had crowed but Kevin had quickly shut her down. "Not with the way you just played out there. Neil can't carry us all the way. One person on offense and two people on defense can't carry us to championships." "No," Neil had said. "But it's a hell of a start and better than having no one at all." The Foxes had cheered and Neil had ignored the older man's glare sent his way and had gone off to shower. He would be forever grateful that he wouldn't have to be naked in front of all the guys while he showered with the stalls there and having a small sense of privacy.**_

Which led Neil, and some of the other Foxes, here in the girls' room--which they now shared with Natasha--for a 'movie night' as Matt called it. Neil was still rather standoffish with the junior backliner, not having the best history with older men or backliners, but he was steadily learning that Matt was a gentle giant and rarely got mad... unless you were Kevin and bossing him around on the court.

Jean and Natasha squished Neil between them on one of the couches in their room, Kevin and Nikolai both sitting on the floor. The upperclassmen were sitting in an array of armchairs. Renee and Allison were sitting in one together, Renee sitting on Allison's lap while the taller blonde idly rubbed the goalkeeper's back over her sweatshirt. Matt and Dan were sat on a loveseat, curled on each other, a way that Neil knew he sometimes did with Jean as a way of comfort and safety. Nicky was there, too, Neil was surprised to note, sitting on the floor next to Nikolai, quietly chattering together; Andrew rarely let him out of his sight, but for some reason, allowed him to come tonight. Neil wondered if the others thought anything was going on between him and Jean, but if they do, they haven't said anything and Neil was silently grateful.

"What movie do you guys want to watch?" Dan asked, her tone excited and chipper, her gaze focused on the former Ravens. 

Neil shrugged, "I've never seen a movie before." And it was the truth. Neither his father nor mother ever saw the point of them, they thought they rotted your brain and made you dumb, and in the Nest, well... it was the Nest. A look of sadness was flashed his way by everyone and he rolled his eyes. "How could you have _never_ seen a movie?" Nicky practically shrieked, and Neil could've sworn that tears pricked his brown eyes. Again, Neil shrugged. "My father wasn't exactly the type to let their kid do anything remotely fun and I was just never allowed entertainment at the Nest." More sad looks and Neil wanted to vomit, he _**hates**_ pity.

Thankfully, Natasha came in when she felt more than saw her twin stiffen beside her, "How about _Lilo & Stitch_? We can start introducing Neil to the must-sees." The upperclassmen were all eager to agree to her suggestion and the thought that he'd most likely be in this same position in only a few days brought another warm river flow through him. 

He didn't know what this feeling inside himself was, but as Neil sat there surrounded by his new teammates and his family, he realized that perhaps, he could get used to it and that if he did, he wouldn't hate it.

 ~~Even if it doesn't last forever~~.

* * *

It was a bad day for Andrew. 

He woke up from a nightmare filled hands trying to hold him down while thirteen-year-old Andrew fought back, the light from the hallway flowing into his room at Cass' house, her grief-stricken face when the cops hauled Drake off into one of their police cars, and her going back inside with a serene expression on her face as if she hadn't just walked in on her biological son trying to rape her foster son who she was planning to adopt. 

As if her biological son wasn't a walking and breathing monster.

To top it off, Nicky was too energetic, something about the upperclassmen and Neil's groupies having a movie night later and him wanting to go. Voluntarily spend time with those fuck ups? No. Thank. You. But, Aaron was off with his little cheerleader at the library by noon and it was just Nicky and Andrew in the dorm and because the latter didn't want to be alone with the flamer that is his cousin, he let him go to the movie night with the others.

Andrew was on his fifth cigarette when Nicky came back close to midnight with tears in his eyes. The blond was up immediately, his cigarette forgotten, and on edge. "What happened?" He was going to give a slow and painful death to every other Fox who was there tonight if they hurt him.

The taller man chuckled tearfully, "It's just... did you know that Neil just watched his first movie _ever_? He's eighteen and he'd never seen a movie before tonight. **Eighteen** , Andrew. I don't it just- just brought the emotion out of me, I guess. I'm okay, though, nothing bad happened. I actually had a lot of fun with them, they're good people."

Andrew rolled his eyes, "You act as if I care, about... any of that."

Nicky frowned, "Really Andrew? I want friends outside of you and Aaron, and they're cool. I like them!" He thought for a second before adding, "Minus Seth, but he wasn't there tonight, probably out at a bar getting high or something."

Andrew grunted his agreement and went to grab a pint of triple chocolate delight from the freezer when his phone rang. He answered with a grunt, not bothering to check the caller ID. 

"Minyard."

Coach's gruff voice is laced with something, something Andrew can't place. 

"What?"

"Seth is dead. He overdosed with some buddies of his at a nearby club. Get your group and meet in the lounge."

Andrew shut his phone and dragged a confused Nicky out of their dorm room, running into Aaron in the doorway and dragged him too. When they got there, everyone was already in their unassigned assigned seats. Matt's eyes were red, his dark cheeks tear-stained and Andrew realized then that he and Seth had been roommates, just the two of them. He knew that realistically, Neil and his group--sans Natasha--were most likely going to have to share a dorm with him. 

Though that'd be five men and the dorms were only meant to fit four so two of them would have to share a bed, or one of them move into Andrew's dorm. That is **not** an option. At. All. No, Andrew had a hard enough time sharing space with Aaron and Nicky, he was **not** going to take one of Neil's brethren.

* * *

Andrew **does** take up one of Neil's brethren, Nikolai. 

Nicky had taken to making an acquaintance out of the youngest Hatford and when Wymack told the group to decide who went with Andrew's lot and the rest with Matt, Nicky had asked Nikolai if he wanted to join them. The gray-eyed boy had looked up to his older brother. Neil had said something in Polish which Nikolai had replied back in the same language and then the older man nodded and let Nikolai join Andrew's lot in their dorm.

Nikolai and Nicky leave the dorm several more nights that week for movie nights with everyone else while Aaron's study group--who even has a study group in the summer?--starts meeting more and more frequently as the semester grows closer, and Andrew well- Andrew's been spending more time on the roof chainsmoking and drinking to try and dim the symptoms of withdrawal. It doesn't always help.

* * *

Nikolai and Nicky were talking animatedly together when they walked into Neil's dorm one night in August, surprisingly, Andrew and Aaron in tow. The fall semester and Exy season are a week away from starting and the upperclassmen and Neil's group and Nicky kept growing closer, having movie nights a few nights a week. Tonight, they decided to play some drinking games instead and while everyone was rather surprised to see the twins there, they had plenty of alcohol for everyone. 

Nicky started first with a game of Never Have I Ever.

"Okay, okay! Never have I ever... kissed a girl." Kevin, Aaron, Matt, Renne, Allison, Natasha, Nikolai, and Neil drink. Nicky gasped overly excited, "Nat! You've kissed a girl before?" Neil's twin nodded, "Yeah, I even have a girlfriend back in London."

"She's a bitch," Nikolai adds on. 

"No, she isn't, you bastard."

"Yes she fucking is but your tongue is so far down her throat you can't even see it."

A few startled laughs sound from around the circle which the Foxes had made around their alcohol. Neil, of course, doesn't drink so he and Jean have a few bottles of soda--Neil had tried it for the first time in for the Fourth of July and he learned that he didn't hate it, even if it was a bit too sweet for his liking--shared between them. 

"Whatever." 

Ava-May goes next, "Never have I ever had sex with a man."

Nicky, Jean, Neil, and Nikolai drink.

"Neil! Jean! Y'all been holding out on me?" Nicky exclaims as he puts his hand over his heart as if he was personally offended. Maybe he was, Neil could never really tell with the older man.

"I have a boyfriend," Jean says and Neil elbows him in the side. "Mister Sun Surfer," he teases. "Shut up." 

"Who is he?? Oh my god, I _**have**_ to meet him!" Nicky shouts. 

"Jeremy Knox." Neil blurts out and silently chuckles as Jean smacks him upside in the head.

Gasps from the Foxes' lips and questions come out but one gets everyone's attention. 

"And who, Neil, is the guy you slept with?" Aaron asked. His hazel eyes were burning bright with a challenge. Neil raised an auburn brow, a smirk that made Jean swear silently beside him, a smirk of a whore. A smirk that was beaten and fucked into him by the time he was ten-years-old. "Why do you care?" He asked, and contrary to the smirk on his face, his tone and eyes were hard and cold. 

A shrug. "Curious."

Kevin lets out a short, drunken snort. "The better question is who are the guys that Neil _hasn't_ slept with." A rolled of icy blue eyes and a sharp his in Japanese, "Shut the fuck up, Kevi."

"Oh Neily Neil, I want English," a manic Andrew said from across him. 

"There is a reason the Ravens call me their whore."

Curious glances were sent his way and he could tell that the Foxes had more questions but Jean took his turn to which Neil sent a grateful look to his partner. Of course, he'd sense his discomfort at the change of topic. 

"Never have I ever killed someone." Neil threw a glare at his smirking partner and drank. Andrew, Renee, Natasha, and Nikolai drank as well. 

Matt went next, "Never have I ever had a boyfriend." Nicky and Jean and Nikolai drank. Neil didn't because technically, he didn't have a boyfriend. He just had Ichirou, his owner and master who occasionally fucked him and had him translate languages. 

They played more until everyone had gone twice and then they moved on to Truth or Dare. Again, Nicky began. 

"Nik, truth or dare?"

"Truth." 

" What's the best thing to ever happen to you?"

"Easy, Abram and Ava-May."

A string of aw's rang through throughout the mini-crowd. 

"Ava-May, truth or dare?'

"Dare."

"I dare you to kiss the most attractive person in this circle, with their permission, of course."

"I can't kiss myself, Andras."

Matt groaned, "Not another Allison." But the taller blonde didn't look offended at all. Allison looked at the middle Hatford sibling. "I knew I liked you," she said with a smile on her face. 

"Aaron, truth or dare?" 

The older man looked a bit startled to have been on the receiving end of the game but he said, "Truth."

"Why are you such an asshole?"

"I'm not," Aaron defended himself.

"This is truth or dare, Minyard. Not lie or dare."

"Fuck you," he said.

"Neil, truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"Worst moment in your life?"

Jean and Natasha tensed on both sides of him and he could tell that his younger brother did the same from his twin's other side.

Neil sucked in a deep breath and swallowed the panic that rose at the memory of unwanted hands and mouths and cocks all around him, pushing him down, cutting him apart, burning him, and destroying him from the outside-in.

He decides on a milder memory, one almost as bad and nearly as traumatic but one that Neil was grateful he had no nightmares of. 

"The West Tower explosion a few years ago. I was inside taking care of some people the Moriyamas wanted me to deal with. But a bomb that one of them somehow snuck in went off and I was caught under one of the support beams. One of my lungs nearly collapsed and it was my first time in an actual hospital. It was also the only time I was ever allowed out of practice."

"The news never said anything about a thirteen-year-old being in the explosion," Dan said. Her voice quiet and tight.

"Because the Main Branch covered it up, they didn't want anyone outside of the Ravens to know about me yet so they got me out of there before the medics got there and everything else was the same as the news broadcasted it to be."

Everyone took that without question but Jean elbowed him in the side and whispered in Dutch, "We both know that's not your worst moment in life."

"I- I couldn't."

"I know. Still, I'm proud of you for saying what you did."

A small quirk of Neil's lips, "Thank you. For everything."

"Of course. You're my brother and my best friend. I love you."

"I love you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some angst mixed with some soft beginning of found family fluff for y'all. 
> 
> Next up:  
> Start of the semester, the start of the season, Kathy Fernindad's show, and more Fox bonding.
> 
> Thank y'all so much for reading it truly does mean the world to me. Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riko being Riko, Neil being Neil, Natasha threatening men who hurt her brother with knives even though she's over a foot shorter and dozens of pounds lighter, and of course, Fox bonding!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not even sure where this is going, tbh. but i like it (?) so im gonna keep going w/ it.  
> 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: mentions of neil’s eating disorder (afrid) [it’s yet to be diagnosed, however] + vomit + weight loss + starvation, mentions of neil’s trauma (rape and child prostitution and torture)

Neil wakes up with a chocked back scream in his throat. The feelings of hands and lips gracing across his skin made it crawl and slither away, far away from any potential threat. His blue eyes observe the room around him, Jean on the top bunk across from him, Kevin on the bunk below Jean's, and from the vibrations coming up the metal polls of the bunk bed, Neil knows that Matt is below him. Panic swarms him before he remembers that Nikolai is in Nicky's room, now. 

Jean's gray eyes snap open from the other side of the room and carefully take in Neil's small frame that's pressed to the wall behind him. The pair had quickly learned that their roommates could sleep through almost anything, with Matt only have woken up one night during their first night in the dorm when Neil had a particularly horrible nightmare.

"You're not there, Abram. Okay? You're safe. You're out," Jean said in calm Dutch, his voice deep and raspy with sleep yet calm.

Abram's eyes traveled from the corner they were focused--or unfocused, as Neil's gaze always was when he woke up from a nightmare--and over to his brother and best friend. He blinked to attention. 

"We're out. We're safe," he repeated the mantra and softly smiled at his partner after receiving a proud grin for his progress. Eight months ago, in January, he wouldn't have even been able to get out of his haze for hours, possibly all day. The memories were too fresh and nightmares were too realistic. 

"We have our mandatory visit with the team psychiatrist later. Are you going to participate or are you going to ramble off Exy stats?"

"I'm still deciding which team to talk about. Maybe the Trojans or the Jackals."

A groan from the Frenchman was his only response before his brother laid back on the bed and quickly fell back asleep. Neil relished in his roommates' soft snores before laying back down himself, his back flush against the wall.

* * *

Of course, Natasha and Andrew got paired together to go see Bee for the biannual mandatory therapy session.

Andrew had kept his manic grin plastered on his face--he wanted to drop it and roll his eyes but he couldn't--all the while Wymack had listed off the pairs. Andrew couldn't help but find it somewhat symbolic as Aaron and Neil were paired together as well. Twins with twins, how ironic.

The defensive dealer had been insistent that the pair take her car and Andrew didn't argue given that he can't drive while on his meds. The thought of being in a stranger's car was rather trivial in his drugged-up state but he knows, subconsciously, that he would be rather alarmed if he was sober, even if he did know where he was going. 

"Andrew," Bee greets him when he first walks into her office. "It's nice to see you again."

"Hot chocolate," Andrew demands, and the shrink nods and gets him a mug and some of the sweet and chocolate concoction. "Anything you want to talk about, today?" She asks, voice welcoming. "The season starts this week, are you excited?" "No Exy." "How are Nicky and Aaron doing, then? I presume Nicky had fun in Germany?"

Andrew tells her about his cousin going to the European country for summer to visit his fiancee who he hadn't seen since the previous winter when he spent a few days with him in Colombia. Andrew and Aaron were smart enough to not go with them, not wanting to overhear their oh so joyous reunion.

Bee nods through everything, smiling and commenting when she feels like it until Andrew is finished with his hot cocoa and leaves. Natasha is sitting in the waiting room, leg bouncing anxiously before she sees the other blond. She smiles and nods at him as she passes him on her way to Bee's office and Andrew inwardly scoffs before taking her previously occupied seat and waiting for the younger blonde to finish.

* * *

Natasha didn't really know what to think about Betsy Dobson. 

The woman- she was- there was something about her that the young Hatford took a keen liking to. She had a kind demeanor to her, and a calm, unwavering voice when Natasha revealed some not-so-sweet things about her or her past. Betsy had simply nodded at everything she's told her with a considering look on her face. 

"Can I talk about other people in here?" Natasha asks. 

"Of course. Though, if you want to know what others say, it's against my contract--both professional and personal--to say anything about another patient unless I believe they're a danger to themselves or others."

The young blonde smiled slightly, "So, I can talk about my brothers?"

"If you want to."

"Okay, good. So I know you talked to Neil earlier this year about taking some sessions with you so he can try and heal from everything that he's experienced for- well his entire life. And I'm worried about him. He picky with his food, like I thought Nikolai was picky, but Neil is an entirely different level. He cut vegetables out of his diet entirely, he only eats food that he sees being made and if he does he food he didn't witness being made? He vomits it back up when he's alone. Jean said to leave it alone and that it's just how he is but that can't be normal, right?"

The psychiatrist listens along attentively throughout Natasha's entire speech while nodding and taking notes on her little notepad. 

"Have you talked to Neil about this and expressed your worry for him?" 

A light blush coated the girl's cheeks, "Well, no. He's just so- I don't know, sensitive? Difficult? About some of the information that he shares with us, about his time in Evermore and I just want to know what he went through so I know how to help him."

Betsy smiled warmly, "That's really good that you want to help him, Natasha. I think you should start by asking him about it and going from there."

"Okay. Thank you, Doctor Dobson."

"Please, call me Bee."

The two women shared a soft smile, "Okay, **Bee.** Thank you."

"All high and mighty there, Hatford?" The older--which twin was older?--Minyard twin asked when he saw her in the lobby. Natasha rolled her eyes at him and walked out, swirling her keys around her pointer finger as she unlocked her car.

"Are you ever not an obnoxious fuck?" She asked him on their way back to the Foxhole Court. He was whistling in the car and it was driving her mad with annoyance.

"Are you ever not a knife-carrying woman?"

A scoff. "That's the pot calling the kettle. I know you have Renee's old knives in your armbands. You're not slick, Minyard."

”Neither are you, Natasha Ava-May.”

The younger of the pair scowled up at her elder and shoved her middle finger in his face as she muttered in French about dumb blond midgets while Andrew laughed.

* * *

Neil hates shrinks. 

It’s a thought that first occurred to him years ago when it was beaten into him to not trust anyone. To not tell your problems or talk to anyone of authority. Doctors, shrinks, and cops—Neil likes to call them pigs— ~~were~~ are at the very top of this list.

So when Neil first walked into Betsy Dobson’s office, the stats of the Penn State Lions all memorized for him to ramble off, and the woman asks to talk about his eating habits? He’s immediately on guard, and of course, the shrink caught on because she said, “I talked to Natasha earlier and she expressed her concern for you.”

 _The twin thing, really?_ Neil thinks. _Useless_.

“I’m fine,” Neil decides to say instead. It was his conditioned response when people expressed such emotions for him. Such useless emotions only get you more hurt in the end. 

”Okay, but I think you should talk to her about it. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, I can’t force you to, but I do think you two should talk.”

”There’s nothing to talk about. **I’m fine**.”

”Okay, Neil.”

Neil knew that she didn’t believe him but whatever. It wasn’t his job to make her believe him.

”Is there anything you do want to talk about? The season starts this week.”

And just like that, Neil talks about all the Exy teams in the Class I division and their stats. 

He quickly leaves once he’s allowed to and waits for Aaron to get done with his session. The two don’t say anything or even look at the other, on the drive back to the court where everyone else is waiting for them.

”I’m fine,” he says in Polish once he’s sat down next to his twin in the Foxes’ lounge, waiting for Coach Wymack to come out to tell them to get their asses on the court. 

She turns to him. “You’re clearly not. Neil, you _can_ talk to me. I’m your twin sister.”

” **I’m fine** ,” he insists. 

“Do you even know what that word means? Because I don’t think you do. You said the same thing when we got you out of Evermore eight months ago. You weren’t fine then and I don’t think you’re fine now, either.”

”I’m not bleeding, and I’m not unconscious so yes, I’m fine.”

”Neil, can you just listen to me? You’ve gone through a lot of traumatic events in your life meaning you have a lot of trauma. I know you were never able to heal at the Nest but you can here, okay? Abby and Bee and Coach and us, the Foxes, will be here along the way.”

Neil guests that Natasha has a point. The Foxes and Abby have shown that they’re there for each other. After all, they did help him start to feel something other than pain, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to give them his entire being.

No, Neil was going to wait and see for himself just how far these Foxes would go to win. If they’d hurt each other along the way just for personal gain or if they’d help another up if they fell.

”Alright maggots, get your asses on the court doing drills,” Coach commanded and Neil was quick to obey. 

Part of him knows that Coach or anyone else was going to help him if he fucked up in practice but the fear of being cut to pieces or best unconscious with a heavy cane still ran through his veins. He lived at Evermore for eleven years, the instinct to always _**go go go**_ is not going to go away, but Neil hopes that it does.

Neil hopes that it does soon.

* * *

The first day of classes is a minor disaster.

First, Neil almost slept through this alarm for practice which would’ve gotten him beaten bloody in the Nest. Then, Neil was almost late to his first class, not realizing it was on the opposite end of campus than the court.

Third, well, Neil had to deal with people. Alone. He’s not good with people, because when he’s surrounded by hundreds of people, Neil expects pain and blood to follow. But it doesn’t and it’s driving him insane.

People talked about him as he walked by, being the “missing knight” in the King of Exy’s Perfect Court. People coming up to him, touching him, and getting in his space for autographs which he gave with the best media-trained smile on his face.

When he got back to the court after his classes and saw Jean and Kevin, he knew they had similar experiences as well. 

“I hate college,” Kevin said to the two of them in Japanese, and Jean quietly chuckled his agreement. Neil did too but by nodding along before turning his focus onto Coach. Part of him still didn’t believe that he and Kevin were related but there were other times when the pair are watching Exy games on Abby's couch; they'd sit with their right leg over their left and their head propped up by their right leg, it was frightening to see the similarities. It was even scarier to see how Wymack still didn't know that he had a son or that said son is Kevin fucking Day.

"All right maggots, get changed, and then get out there!" Wymack bellowed for the nth time that summer.

When everyone else was done and it was just Andrew and Neil in the locker room he asked, "Will you actually try at the game on Friday?" The blond looked at him with a manic grin, "Now why would I do that?" 

"Because this sport that you claim to hate so much, you're bloody good at it. It's also the thing paying yours and your family's education."

"What would you give me in return for my valiant efforts at such a horrible game."

"First, I'm going to pretend that you just called Exy a 'horrible game,'" Neil started.

"Junkie idiot," Andrew swore beneath his breath and Neil snorted in disdain. 

"And I'll give you anything. Within reason."

"Come to Columbia with us after the game on Friday. You can bring your _crew_ if you wish."

"No drugs," Neil said, "if you have any questions, we'll answer them all to the best of our ability but **no drugs**. Not if we don't want them."

The goalkeeper rolled his eyes but agreed. Surprisingly, he put effort into practice as well, and when it was over well, to say that everyone--mostly everyone--was surprised was an understatement. Andrew had been blocking balls and throwing them back across the court with little movement at all and when Neil had shouted at him, asking about the sudden interest in the sport, all he received was an "85% Junkie" and a ball to his helmet, he quietly chuckled to himself and ran back down the court.

"How- how did you do that?" Dan asked after practice in his dorm, she and Natasha had come back along with them to their dorm so they could just "hang out" according to Matt which brought a surge of panic through Neil's veins before remembering that this wasn't like the Nest. _They_ aren't like _them_. The Foxes aren't the Ravens, though Neil was still waiting for the day when they turned out just like them, or worse. When the facade finally fell and Neil finds out that he just traded one abusive team for another.

Deep down, Neil knew that it wouldn't happen, but there was that pit in his stomach that wouldn't dissipate. 

Something bad was going to happen soon and Neil didn't like it.

* * *

"Kevin, Jean, and Neil are going on Kathy Fernindad's show tomorrow morning," Wymack announced just hours before their first game of the season. 

"Kathy Fernindad?" Neil asked in obvious distaste. 

Andrew would never stop finding it ~~amusing~~ annoying when the eldest Hatford spoke about anything. His stupid British accent with his stupid beautiful blue eyes and the stupid auburn curls made Andrew want to punch him whenever he talked which wasn't often but it felt like it was. He was going to have to do something about whatever _that_ is very soon. 

Day sighed from a few seats away from Neil, "Yes, Kathy. You know the one you hate so much."

"I know who she is, dipshit."

Moreau snapped his fingers between the two, silencing them while speaking in Japanese. Neil scowled and Day smiled slightly before turning back to Coach. 

"As I was saying," he gave a pointed look to the eldest Hatford who sunk back in his seat slightly, "the three of them are going on Kathy's show tomorrow and we've all been invited to try and not to cause too much trouble." He shot all three Hatford and Andrew a pointed look that made him sigh, "Oh ye of little faith, Coach."

Coach rubbed his hand over his face and muttered under his breath about 'about his paygrade' before going into a rundown of tonight's team, the Breckenridge Jackals, the best team in the district. 

Well, the **former** best team in the district. Two years ago Edgar Allan transferred into their district from the Northeast which made the Southeast district look even worse than it did before.

Not that Andrew cared about such trivial things, at all.

Neil and Day and Moreau and Boyd and Wilds were the starters in front of Andrew when the ball was first dealt. Andrew totally wasn't looking at Neil as he ran around the court, a slight gleam in his eyes, his blue eyes alight with amusement as he taunts his backliners and getting slammed into walls and getting back up and fucking _dancing_ around his marks.

Day gets slammed into the wall a little after halftime, "Get me out of here!" He yelled as his mark, "Gorilla" Hawking having gotten him between him and the wall, Kevin's left hand dangerously close to being crushed in the wall. 

To Andrew's right, there was a flash of orange and Boyd was barreling into Hawking, sending him off of Kevin and to the floor. Neil was over there next, separating the two older men before anything could escalate beyond a tackle. 

The little bird just had to go and ruin any possible amusement for him, didn't he? Little fucker.

Of course, Andrew has amused once again when Neil got checked into the wall by Alyssa Leverett, a backliner, and held there for so long that it became very apparent that it was a very illegal hold. Neil brought his stick up and around, hitting her in the chest and she got off of him but not before he barrelled into her, sending her sprawling on her ass on the ground.

Maybe little fuckers are useful, after all.

* * *

After winning against the Jackals 7-4, the Foxes were ecstatic but refrained from partying due to the too early morning the following day. 

The morning was indeed too early, and why they had to drive when they could've flown went way beyond Neil's head at that hour in the morning. After all the Foxes piled onto the bus, the upperclassmen in front with Abby, Coach driving, Neil's family in the middle, and the cousins in the back, they stopped twice while on the road for the bathroom, coffee, and donuts. 

Nausea swelled at the base of Neil's throat at the thought of eating and drinking anything he hadn't witnessed being made so when Jean had a few sips of his, he gave it to Neil. He smiled up at the older man in thanks and continued to finish his coffee.

Kathy Fernindad's studio was ground very much dreaded in the Nest. Riko and Kevin would always leave at the early hours of the morning and come back hours later, drained and--for Riko--angry. The scars that Neil obtained after interviews like these started to burn through his sweatshirt as if he was just getting them again.

Coach handed them all VIP passes once they got into the studio where Kathy was waiting for everyone. "Kevin Day! Oh how lovely to see you again, it's been too long," she greeted, much too happy for the time of day. Kevin hugged her as he replied, "It has, Kathy. Thank you for allowing Jean, Neil, and I onto your show this morning."

She turned to those mentioned, "Jean Moreau, of course always amazing to see you," she hugged him and he begrudgingly returned. "And Neil, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet." Kathy reached to hug Neil as well and she either didn't see how he stiffened at her approach or she didn't care as she wrapped her arms around him. "You too," he managed to choke out as he patted her back lightly.

As soon as she let go, Neil stepped out of her reach and stood next to Jean. 

"I hate her," Jean whispered in Dutch. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"I hate _that_ even more."

"I hate you, Jeanie the Frenchie."

"Says the British Bastard."

Neil rolled his eyes. "Let's go get changed so we can get this shit over with."

* * *

"Welcome everyone! Today I have some **very** special guests joining me. Please welcome Kevin Day, Neil Hatford, and Jean Moreau of the Palmetto State Foxes!" The crowd screamed as Kevin walked out on the stage followed by Jean followed by Neil. The three were all dressed in matching white dress shirts with black sport jackets and black dress pants, along with their press smiles plastered on their faces. Kevin and Jean sat on the couch on the right side of Kathy's desk while Neil sat on the other side across from them.

"It's nice to be back, Kathy. Thank you for having us." 

"Of course. Let's talk about that game yesterday, shall we? My, what an exciting game!"

"Yes," Jean began, "It was rather exciting, wasn't it?"

"How does it feel to be on an entirely different team? I imagine it must feel weird not being on the same court as Riko Moriyama."

Neil saw the way that Kevin shifted slightly at the mention of his old partner, how his jaw clenched ever so slightly so Neil spoke, "It was quite the adjustment at first, I'll admit. But the Foxes have all been very welcoming and we've adjusted rather easily these last eight months but we wouldn't have been able to do it without them."

Dan and Matt whooped from the audience and Jean sent Neil a look. Neil shrugged back causing the older man to roll his gray eyes. 

Kathy laughed, "Your teammates seem to agree with you, Neil. Now I find this so interesting is you, Neil, moving to the Foxes as well. And just days after you were announced to join the Ravens as Number 3. And then a name change on top of that," she chuckled. "Why the sudden changes?"

Neil mentally cursed himself for going along with the interview so easily.

"Well, Kathy, the change in my team really had to do with me wanting to try something new. I'd lived at Castle Evermore since I was seven and wanted a change of scenery so I was already looking at another team. Jean and Kevin going to the Foxes was just a bonus. As for my name, it was as simple as me wanting to disassociate myself with my father as much as possible."

She seemed to deem that answer enough because she smiled and looked to Jean next, "And what about you, Jean? You seemed very content as a Raven."

"I was," Jean lied. "But Kevin had just been in the accident and needed a change of scenery as Neil said. I joined him because as Ravens with our Partner System, it can be hard to be alone. It was already a time of huge adjustment for Kevin and I wanted it to go as smoothly as possible."

"I see," Kathy stated. "And you, Kevin. I imagine that the skiing accident was horrible. Why did you go to the Foxes when you could've gone to any other team in the division?"

Only the three men on the stage knew the real reason but Kevin told a half-truth, "I hoped to make the Foxes a better team. I also knew that Coach David Wymack would most likely take me in due to his past friendship with my mother."

"I see, do any of you know what Riko thought about your decision to leave?"

"No," Kevin said, "We've all been very busy."

"Well then," Kathy began with a blinding smile on her face, and Neil's stomach sunk. "Have I got a surprise for you."

The Edgar Allan fight song rang through the speakers and the crowd shouted out, "King! King! King!" 

Neil met his twin's eyes in the audience, her eyes were alight with murder and anger but Neil's blue eyes said only terror and pain. Natasha made to get up, probably to stab Riko to death, but Nikolai and Renee gripped her hands and sat her back down. Andras jumped in her lap and covered her mouth with his hand to keep her from shouting all the things she wanted to say to him.

Kevin made a squeaking sound from in front of him and Neil could see Jean's hand gripping Kevin's by their legs. Riko Moriyama walked on the stage like he owned it. Like he was King. Kevin's face paled and Neil could feel his doing the same. Jean's face, however, flushed red with anger. Anger for what he did to Neil for eleven years. Anger for breaking Kevin's hand. Anger for existing. 

Riko shook Kathy's hand and whispered something in her ear as he kissed her cheek in greeting but it was lost in the crowd's screams and cheers. 

When the crowd was quiet again Riko said, "Brothers, it's been too long." He reached a hand out to Kevin and Kevin, the idiot, took Riko's hand in his and allowed the latter to pull him into a hug.

Kevin pulled away shortly after but Riko quickly did the same to Jean who begrudgingly took it, then it was Neil's turn.

Riko leaned in to whisper in Japanese, "You're a long way from your brothel, Nathaniel."

Neil swallowed and whispered back in the same language, "And you're far from your nest you bird-brained bastard. Best to fly back while you still can."

"You're going to regret that. You're going to regret ever leaving me." 

"When? When we beat you in finals this year? I don't think so."

"You've gotten a sense of humor since you left, I see."

"Riko," Kathy said and stopped their conversation and their hug. "How did you feel, having all three of your Perfect Court members leave you. I can't imagine it being easy on you."

Riko sat beside Neil and said in a quiet voice, feigning hurt while his eyes screamed bloody murder and suddenly a tinge of guilt hit Neil for leaving everyone else behind in the Nest. He recruited half the freshmen only to leave them to Riko's wrath and to become like Johnson and Reacher and Saunders and Miller. To become demons to younger males.

"It was hard. On all of us, I believe. The injury was Kevin's to bear but we all suffered from it. I lost my brother and two of my best friends because of it. It- it wasn't easy, adjusting," he lied through his teeth. "But it seems that in the end, I came out on top. In truth, the most painful thing for me these last nine months has been watching my brothers fall so hard."

Neil's fear turned to red-hot anger. Jean met his eyes from the opposite couch. Everything in his eyes said to _do it_ but everything in his body language said _don't do it_. He knows what kind of damage Neil's temper could do. After all, he had to pay the price for it before Neil made the deal with Ichirou and Kengo, but Neil had to pay for Jean's disobedience and insolence so he thought it fair, back then. 

"I do believe you're supposed to **encourage** your family, Riko. No?" He asked, his voice taunting the older man. Riko raised a brow. 

"I don't believe I gave you permission to speak."

"And I don't believe I need your _"permission"_ for shit."

" _Nathaniel_ ," Riko warned. "You know nothing of the level of mine and Kevin's friendship."

"I don't? Now Riko, don't act like I didn't live across the hall from the two of you for eleven years. I know how you see him, see _us_ ," he said while motioning to his brothers. "But you're right, I guess. Degradation is the best motivation, no? Isn't that what you always told us?"

"Yes."

"Wow," Kathy said. "I'm afraid that's all we have time for, today everyone!" The lights and camera shut off and immediately, Neil was between Jean and Kevin. Kevin was pale and shaking while Jean was warm with fury. Neil imagined he was a mix of the two but he couldn't tell.

"Thank you all so much, the ratings are going to skyrocket!"

"We're glad we could be of assistance," Riko said. 

As soon as Kathy turned her back on them, Neil grabbed his brothers' arms and dragged them after him as he got off the stage as soon as possible. What also happened as soon as they were out of view of the stage, Riko pinned him to the wall, a knife to his throat. 

Neil snorted humorlessly. "This is awfully familiar isn't it?"

"Let him go, Riko," Jean commanded. Riko didn't listen and just dug the knife further into his throat. Blood began dripping down his throat, the knife having slowly cut its way to it. It wasn't that deep, seeing as Neil was still breathing, but it would probably still scar over. 

"Get off of my brother or get a knife in your spleen," Ava-May said all too sweetly, suddenly having appeared at her twin's side. 

Riko didn't move, didn't even look at her, as he said, "I heard about you, Natalie. Nathaniel here would cry out for you for _hours_ after our fun little sessions." Natasha flinched slightly but kept her knife angled for Riko's gut. "Leave her out of this," Neil bit out. "When did you cry for her the most, hmm Nathaniel? Was it when you first got to the Nest and I locked out in a room full of senior backliners or was it at your tenth birthday party when you just found she supposedly died and you were being fucked senseless?"

The blonde's gray eyes widened and she pushed Riko off of him, the knife cutting a bit longer and bit deeper in Neil's throat. She pushed Riko up against the wall and held her knife to his heart. She was shaking, whether with grief or rage, Neil didn't know but he would _**hate**_ to be on the receiving end of any one of Ava-May's knives. Somehow, all three Hatfords had inherited their father's temper though it showed in different ways. Neil was quick to temper but clever and rarely acted on impulse, Natasha acted on impulse but was slow to get angry. Nikolai was both quick to anger and impulsive which didn't always bode well for him in fights--according to Natasha.

"Nat," he called to her, "I'm fine."

She stabbed her knife in the collar of Riko's shirt, pinning him to the wall before she turned to him, another knife in hand. 

"Shut up. You are **not** fine. In fact, I don't think you know the definition of fine, dammit!"

"I do and I'm fine," he insisted. 

"Oh my, Coach! Look at that Lil' bird hanging for all the Foxes to see. How entertaining," Andrew walked up to Riko, who was still hung on the wall and was trying to get the knife from behind him and began _poking_ him.

"That's enough Minyard. Let's go."

Abby appeared next to Coach and Kevin walked to her like his life depended on it. She engulfed him in a hug as he shook in her arms. Jean walked over to Neil and held his hand up to his throat and then pulled it away. He grimaced at the blood on his hand but before he could get anyone's attention about it, Nicky called out, "Oh my god, Neil are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Your neck is literally bleeding-" he pointed out. 

"Not the first time," Neil said and a sad look crossed the older man's face and Neil thought he was going to start crying.

"That's not bloody normal," Nikolai cursed out. Everyone looked at him, "Pun may or may not have been intended," he added shyly.

Abby let Kevin out of the hug and when she caught sight of Neil's neck, she cursed. 

"We have to get you to a hospital."

"No. No hospitals."

"Neil-"

"No hospitals," he ground out. 

"He doesn't need one. He just needs a bandage and he'll be fine," Jean said. 

"You'd know that well, wouldn't you, French Fry?" Riko asked from his spot on the wall. "You and the whore always getting in the way of my knives. Well, the whore, mostly. Always getting in the way of my knives and my backliners." Neil flinched and the Foxes glared. 

"I'd shut the fuck up right now if I were you," Nikolai snapped. "Before I bury _my_ knives in _your_ gut and let Jean and Matt take care of _you_."

"They don't know, do they, Nathaniel?" 

Jean growled, " _Shut up Riko_ "

"They don't and I intend to keep it that way so if you tell them a single thing I swear to you, I will make you pay for every backliner and every scar you've ever put on me," Neil snarled in Japanese.

A dark chuckle escaped Riko's thin lips and Neil decided he had enough. He took one of the knives in his younger brother's hand and took it to Riko's femoral artery. "One tiny cut and you'll bleed out within five minutes. I'm sure Ichirou wouldn't mind seeing how you're nothing more than a thorn in his side."

"You would know what my brother likes, wouldn't you? Considering you're his whore and have been since you were how old? Twelve, I believe."

A few gasps from behind him but at that moment, Neil didn't care. 

"Indeed I am and indeed I have. And unfortunately for you, that's not ending any time soon. So, either _I_ call him and have him bench you for a couple of games or you leave us the **fuck alone**."

Riko was shaking with rage and Neil laughed. Before letting go of him and taking Natasha's knife from his shirt. 

He flipped off Riko's slumped figure on the ground and walked out, his Foxes trailing behind him in various states of amusement, horror, wariness, and amazement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! it means the world to me. as always, comments and kudos are always appreciated.
> 
>   
> i just love natasha and andrew’s friendship (can i even all it that? minor rivalry, maybe?) so yes, i’m going to continue being the pair together (along w/ renee) just because i can.
> 
> also, i have a new story that i'm working on called 'the darkness of light' it's a fantasy work that i think some of y'all would really enjoy (especially if you like throne of glass by sarah j. maas).


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall banquet + the aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank y'all so much for the endless support. It means the world.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: mentions of pedophilia, mentions of rape, mentions of self-harm, murder, homophobic slurs (the f-slur), slut-shaming (whore, slut, etc.), depressive thoughts, rape, mention of Nathan's sex circle, mentions of Neil's 10th birthday, food and eating disorder (not specified, yet), violence, blood, knives. 
> 
> Not in order of appearance/numerous mentions so beware when reading. Enjoy!

It was only when Neil was on the bus and they were halfway back to campus after Kathy’s show did the adrenaline in his veins cease and he realized what he did. He must've made some noise of recognition because Jean, from the seat next to him, turned to him. 

"Wha- why did you do that?"

"I- I don't know. Fuck. He's going to kill me now. He's going to actually bloody kill me."

Jean sighed, "Neil-"

"No. No- you don't get it, Jean. He's actually going to kill me. Or he'll drag me back to Evermore," Neil's eyes went wide at the realization. "That- that is much worse than death," he shivered and tucked himself in a ball between the window and his seat as much as possible.

If only Neil could last the year, until May, with the Foxes--with his team and his family--then- then he'd be able to go back. Back to Castle Evermore, back to the Nest, back to the primary source of all his nightmares of demons. 

If only.

* * *

September rolled around faster than Neil would have liked. 

The Foxes were steadily building their undefeated record, with Jean and Kevin and Neil on their line, they're becoming much better. Of course, their teamwork, while improving, isn't improving fast or strong enough for them to be ready for the Ravens and their cult-like hive mind correlation come October 13th. They'd been getting better before the semester started but after- after Neil's "groupies" went to Colombia with Andrew's lot and Neil and Andrew had made a deal--for Andrew to ask Neil questions and to get the truth in exchange for Andrew putting forth some effort in Exy--and had somewhat merged their two groups while Natasha and Neil surfed between the two groups, things had fallen apart. There were no more weekly movies or drinking games with everyone. There was more fighting, more yelling, some barbs thrown here and there. It was a mess.

Though it didn't stop the Foxes to rally around the three ex-Ravens as they walked into Blackwell University's stadium for the fall banquet. While they didn't know anything specific that happened at Evermore, they have a basic understanding. Basic enough to know that none of them are particularly keen on attending tonight. Neil was dressed in a black dress shirt and tight, form-fitting jeans--much to his displeasure. 

Kevin had drunk himself half-conscious with whiskey by the time the Foxes' white and orange bus had pulled into their parking lot and had drunk some more vodka from Coach when he spotted the three black and red EAU Ravens buses. Neil had sat frozen and tense the entire ride, his eyes staring out the window at nothing as he thought of his impending doom. It didn't help when Coach forced all of them to hand over any weapons they had on them once the upperclassmen were let off.

"Motherfucker," Dan cursed as she saw the black and red-clad Ravens seated at several tables. At one of those tables, the one Riko and Reacher and Johnson and Miller and Saunders were sitting at, was clad in white and orange on the other side. Neil mentally cursed at Tetsuji as he thought about the older man having arranged this for some reason.

"Riko," Dan greeted once she was stood before him, behind Neil. The bastard had arranged the seating with him, Kevin, and Jean to be in front of him while Natasha, Matt, Andrew, and Nikolai had been sat farther down. Nicky, Aaron, and their dates sat between them on Kevin's side while Renee, Allison, Neil sat between his two brothers and grasped their hands in his. They were both shaking but Kevin's was from fear as opposed to Jean's malice.

"Hennesey. We meet again."

"Unfortunately," Matt sneered from his end of the table. He was still pissed about the newly scabbed scar on Neil's throat from Riko's knife that he'd received just a few weeks back. Said scar burned in remembrance.

"No need to be rude, Matthew Boyd. We have done nothing to you."

"Neil's neck says otherwise," Jean cut in. Neil squeezed his hand as a sign for him to shut up but he didn't back down. "In fact, the majority of Neil's body _and_ Kevin's left hand say otherwise."

"Jeanie," he hissed beneath his breath, hoping to not draw attention to himself. Of course, it didn't work. 

"You better listen to the whore, Jean. Wouldn't want **him** to pay for your insolence, no?"

"You can't," he said. But the four Perfect Court members all knew that he could. He could and he would.

"We've missed you, Natie," Benjamin Saunders started, two places down on Riko's right. To his left, sat on Riko's right side was Justin Miller, his partner.

"I don't return such feelings. How pitiful."

A sneer from Johnson, "Your fierceness is missed on our court." The unsaid words rang in Neil's ears. _And in our beds_. They must've done the same for Kevin and Jean, too, as they both straightened a little more. Puffed their chests out a bit more. Made themselves bigger, a potential shield should Neil ever need it. 

"I don’t miss you. Now leave me, actually leave all of us,” Neil gestured to all the Foxes, “alone.”

Johnson only smirked and Kevin went still beside him. Neil realized that Riko had taken to testing into Kevin. 

"You've fallen so far, Kevin. Honestly, I'm disappointed. In not only you but **Three** and **Four** as well. Such great players with such a horrible team," his voice was soft but his words were anything but. Neil could practically see the knife hanging in Kevin's ribs being twisted by each of Riko's words. No, Neil had given up too much of himself for Kevin to fall for such empty words. 

"Oh Riko," Neil called, receiving Riko's dark eyes on him. 

"Don't interrupt me when I'm talking, Three."

"Hm, no. I'm not at the Nest anymore. I don't have to follow your useless rules."

He snapped in Japanese, "You are **property**. _My_ **property**. You will always have to follow my rules."

"I believe I'm branded as a member of the Main Branch's Inner Circle. Do you know who doesn't get that? Members of the Side Branch. I don't even think you're tattooed, are you?"

"You're going to regret that."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

A scoff, "I doubt it. You've always been incapable of making me regret things."

"Do you remember oh what was his name? Billy? Billy Wong, I believe. He came pretty close didn't he?"

Neil became as straight as a string upon hearing his old abuser's name. The man had been one of the first Ravens that Riko had locked him in the room with when he was seven. Billy was a freshman then, and he was a fifth-year Senior when Neil made his deal with Kengo and Ichirou. Neil was fucked by him constantly for months, some even after he graduated when he was back for "Pro Days" where Ravens Alumni who went pro and Court would come to the Nest and tell the current Ravens what it was like. Neil hated Pro Days.

"Shut up, Riko," Neil snarled.

"When you were-"

Neil snapped. "You know what, Riko? I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be _really_ difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you're worth a damn, on **or** off the court--yeah, sounds rough. Kevin, Jean, and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know its not entirely your fault that you're mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you're physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don't think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Not anymore. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours about a bloody decade and a year ago. So **shut the fuck up** and _leave us alone_."

"Oh God, Matt," Dan said. "Matt go get Coach."

In Japanese Riko spit back, "You are nothing more than a useless whore of a faggot with no worth to anyone. Not my brother not my uncle, not me, not **anyone**. Though perhaps Wong will have some contradictions with that statement. You can find out for yourself. I will come looking for you and you will give me a moment of your time. Alone."

"No."

"You will or everyone will know just what it meant to be the Ravens' Whore and what you look like underneath all that hot arrogance and... other things." Under his scars, was the unsaid message. 

"Jesus Christ," Coach bellowed from behind. "I can't even leave y'all alone for thirty minutes without you causing trouble."

"Meet me, or everyone knows."

"I'll meet you," Neil said before following the rest of the Foxes with a panicking Kevin and a furious and shocked Jean to the Coach's table where Neil's stomach drops farther than it ever has before.

* * *

Andrew noticed how an already panicked Kevin, shocked Jean, and pale Neil became even more of their respective emotions. The former says something in a language Andrew can't place and an Asian man, a new assistant coach, Andrew would presume says something in the same language. Neil sits down next to him, though Andrew cataloged the stiffness in the younger teen's shoulders and the contentment on the older man's face as well as how Kevin paled and Jean's jaw clenched but the two ex-Ravens sat down nonetheless as well.

Is this man an older birdie? How interesting. 

The middle Hatford child noticed too because she walked over to her twin, "Hi, person. If you don't mind, I'm going to take my brother and my friends and sit on the other end. With our team."

Neil says something in French and Jean and Kevin stood, following Natasha towards him. He raised a brow at his.. teammate. 

"Ravens Alumni," Jean said, anger evident in his voice.

"Oh? And what is his name?"

"Billy Wong. He and Neil..." Jean trails off and shakes with anger before stomping to sit somewhere. Andrew idly wondered what Neil had said to his old partner to get him to relent and sit so far away from him when the pair were usually attached at the hip. "They go way back," Kevin finished, his voice small, scared almost.

Andrew's eyes find Neil and Billy not too far down the table for him to hear except a few words in Korean, he also sees how tense Neil is. How his eyes are pointedly looking anywhere but at the older man. Andrew wonders what type of relationship the two ex-Ravens had, though with the expression he came back from spring break wearing and Jean's rage, he could guess.

Why they left him with him makes Andrew, through his mental warping medication, silently rage.

* * *

"I just missed you so much, my pretty pet," Wong said to Neil in Korean as he slowly caressed his thigh under the table, away from any eyes who were to look their way.

"Why are you here? How are you here?"

"I came back for you, baby boy. Tetsuji hired me as an assistant coach of the Ravens. It would've been so much better if you had stayed like a good whore but you never were obedient, were you? No, you always had so much fire in you. Such a good fighting slut." Neil recoiled and silently whimpered as his hand ran over Neil's clothed dick. "Still can't get it up? I'm so disappointed."

"I don't swing," Neil stated. 

"Don't lie to me," he snapped as their food was brought out. Neil regarded his baked chicken with disgust as he poked around the vegetables on the plate and the dryness of the meat. The thought of eating food he didn't see being cooked was wrong, the thought of eating in front of one of his many rapists made his stomach curl even more. "I know you do. How you used to cry when I drove myself in-and-out of you." 

"I was seven."

"And yet not a virgin. Such a naughty boy you were growing up, Nathaniel."

Wong was tearing into all of Neil's weaknesses. They both knew this and they both also knew it wasn't long until Neil would lash out, most likely getting suspended for hitting a coach.

"Neil," he began. "My name is Neil Hatford, now. Touch me or call me any of _those_ names again and I will personally hunt you down, castrate you, and gut you like a fish." With that Neil got up, leaving behind his untouched dinner, and sat next to his sister.

"Who was that?" She asked around a mouthful of vegetables. 

"New Ravens' Assistant Coach."

"What?" Jean piped up from across the table. "He's-" he began before saying in Dutch, "They did that for you, didn't they? Because of-"

"I think so." Jean sighed and went back to eating while Nicky brought them into a conversation about movies or something, Neil couldn't quite tell because his focus was on Wong the entire time, making sure he stayed away from him and his team. Dinner passed by quickly after that and then the tables were disassembled and everyone made their way to the makeshift dance floor.

"Go forth and have fun," Coach said and Aaron and Nicky took their dates out to the dance floor, Matt and Dan going with them while Renee and Allison left to find some water, and Natasha and Nikolai both made sure Neil was okay before going off to join them.

"I'm not leaving you," Jean said when Neil told him to go have fun along with Kevin. 

"Oh? Sing a song, little bird," Andrew poked. Neil sighed and turned to face his, friend seemed like too strong a word. An acquaintance was more like it. 

"Riko wants to talk to me," he said and as if summoned by some supernatural power, a V-like shape was walking towards them, Riko at the front. They surrounded the four Foxes in a circle, birds flying over their prey. Kevin shifted himself to stand between Neil and Andrew with Jean on Neil's other side.

"Disgraces to Exy," Riko greeted. 

"The World's Greatest Disappointment," Neil shot back.

"Ravens' Whore."

"Unwanted Castaway."

"As entertaining as this is," manic laughter sounded from Neil's right. "I would like to know why you curse us with your presence."

"I've come to start my time. **Three** ," Riko gestured for Neil. "Come with me. **Two** , **Four** , stay," he commanded Kevin and Jean. The former quickly agreed while the latter had his mouth opened to protest before Neil signaled that he'd be okay. 

"Watch him," he told his friend while gesturing to Kevin. Jean nodded though reluctantly. A small hole broke in the circle where he and Riko walked out from that quickly closed back up after Neil was through. The pair walked into the Away locker room which had lockers partially opened and clothes from various teams who had changed there laying around the space. When Riko flicked the lights on, Neil stopped in his tracks as his heart froze in his chest.

"Little Red ain't so little anymore," one of the men said, "We missed you." 

Peter Robinson, currently a New York Bison starting backliner, was a Raven when Neil was ten. Billy Wong was in there too, standing proudly in the middle. All the men, around a dozen from what Neil could see, were all present at his tenth birthday party. Where his father gifted him two death certificates and then locked him in a room with ten older men, all around his age, and was fucked by his sex circle. When Riko had locked him in his room with the majority of the backliners and strikers and he was passed from one to another. 

Neil had a sick feeling that the same thing was going to happen today.

Evan Lopez, a former backliner, came up from behind him and wrapped his arms around Neil's slim waist. Neil thrashed in the man's arms but Evan was older and stronger now, Neil was too but without his knives that he left on the bus, it was fruitless to fight these men.

"What do ya say, boys? Pass him around? At once? What're we thinking?"

"Pass him around," Lucas Moore suggested.

"I call first fuck," Billy said as he walked towards them and pressed his lips to Neil's. Neil thrashed and kicked, repulsed by the touch of him, my the feel of him. Riko threw one of his knives on the ground, the clatter of silver hitting tile rang through the room. Wong picked it up and gingerly took off Neil's dress shirt, knife cutting a small but deep cut into his back. The sting of pain and warm blood flowing down his back had the younger man whimpering. The feeling of a smirk against his neck was the only reply.

"You're all going to have to make it quick. There's only so long that his disgrace of a team will wait until coming to look for him," Riko commanded and everything moved faster in a blur of roaming hands, blood slipping down his back as cut after a cut was sliced into it, as blood poured from his hole where none of the men bothered to use any type of lubrication, not that Neil would know any of it. The pain down there quickly became numb as more and more men forced him open. As they scarred him once more. As they reinforced their place in his nightmares as his worst demons.

When it was over, and everyone left, Neil crawled over to his pile of black clothes. He was bleeding and would need stitches but he needed to get to Jean first. And his sister. He needed to get to his family first. Neil carefully pulled on his shirt and hurried to button it up and slip on his boxers followed by his dress pants.

He limped out of the locker room and quickly met eyes with Andra's gray eyes. He was surrounded by the rest of the Foxes, no doubt wondering where he was. Neil could only guess this was true based on how they quickly walked over him and caught his limp.

"What kind of message did Riko have for you? You certainly took an awfully long time," Andrew commented and Neil involuntarily flinched, the feeling between his legs still too fresh for his liking.

"Does it matter?" He found himself saying, his voice deeper with pushed down fear and anger.

"Seeing as you're limping and you look like shit, yes," Coach said.

"He was just reminding me that I'm still the Ravens' Whore, nothing more, nothing less. Now let's go, yes?"

"Yes. Let's."

With that they quickly left, Natasha and Jean coming to support Neil after he gave his consent despite their touch leaving his skin crawling.

* * *

A little kit was indeed very hurt, wasn't he?

A limping freshman covered in hickeys with blood dripping down his face and his hair a disheveled mess as if several pairs of hands ran through it. And the mention of needing a reminder that he was the 'Ravens' Whore' when reminders are all over the teen's scarred body, oh, yes. Andrew had a definite idea about _what_ exactly had occurred in the locker room and looking around the Foxes' bus on the way back to campus, with the concerned gazes multiple Foxes sent Neil's drunk form's way--he had stolen both Kevin's and Andrew's alcohol as soon as he got on the bus, the bastard--Andrew knew that he wasn't the only one.

Moreau and Natasha were both posted next to Neil's side, unfaltering guards should someone move towards him. Wisely, Matt followed the girls to their room while the Moreau and Natasha took Neil into his room while Kevin stayed with them, most likely to drink away their entire alcohol supply.

Sure enough, their alcohol cabinet was open wide and Kevin had a bottle of vodka pressed against his check like it was his lifeline. It probably was.

All Andrew knew, though, is that he hated the look in Neil's eyes when he saw him come out of that locker room, bloody and limping. He hated the red and purple hickeys on his neck. He hated the way that Neil wrapped his arms around his waist as if that was the only thing keeping him together. He hated the **feelings** and **emotions** it brought out of him, even through the sea of mania that clouded his brain.

Andrew hated Neil Hatford.

* * *

Jean finished cleaning the cuts on Neil's back, another bottle of alcohol clutched between his hands, taking sips of the burning liquid every few other stitches to dull the pain. Natasha had pestered him about what happened but neither partner said anything but her heart began to race once more when she saw the blood test that Jean pulled out of somewhere, and took Neil's arm in his, inserting a needle into his vein and drawing blood.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?"

"STI testing," Jean replied solemnly. It was clear that the older man was angry, his gray eyes burned with silver flames yet his hand stayed steady as he stitched up his friend.

"Why? You don't-"

"He has cuts on his back. He's limping. He was just raped over fifteen times in the forty-five minutes he was gone. That's what the cuts on his back mean. How many times he's been raped."

Horror bloomed in her chest. There were over four thousand cuts on her twin's back. The realization hits her quickly that over the last fourteen years, her twin, her brother, her protector since birth, had been raped what could have been every day, or multiple times a day from what Jean had said. 

"I'm going to kill Riko. I'm going to kill him and I'm going to make it last a fucking lifetime. I'm going to make him hurt as he hurt him."

"Good," Jean said. "He deserves a painful death," and they left the topic at that. 

After Neil was stitched up and cleaned, Natasha helped Jean put him in his bed. The bottle of alcohol was still clutched in his arms like a child would hold a doll and he was curled within himself, trying to make himself appear as small as possible.

She was suddenly stuck with a four-year-old Nathaniel looking very similarly--to similarly for her liking--the night after their fourth birthday when he'd spent the night in the basement that both Natalie and Nicholas had been forbidden to go near. He had curled up in the corner of the 'Wesninski Three's shared room and made himself in as small as a ball as possible. She remembers the hurt that blossomed in her chest when she reached out to hug him and he flinched away while he whimpered. 

Natasha shook her head and rid herself of the past. It would do her no good to regret anything she ever did that could've possibly hurt him, directly or indirectly. She couldn't change anything but she could fix it, make it better. They'd been steadily rebuilding their relationship over the last nine months yet Natasha could still feel a noticeable gap between her and her younger brother and her twin. She had thought it was because they grew up on separate sides of the world, both in a world of death but one much more traumatizing than the other. 

But as Natasha sat on Kevin's bed, watching her brother sleep, she finally figured out what it was that installed that gap between them and him. She just hoped that she knew how to fix it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst is one of my favorite things to write, can't you tell?
> 
> Okay so Neil is obviously not fine, I think it is very obvious. 
> 
> If it isn't obvious, I'm basing Natasha off of the sister that I always wanted but never got (A sister who actively tried to build a relationship and fix it when it broke who also protected those around her). So yes, Natasha is a very strong character because I love Strong Female Characters TM.
> 
> Also, there's this new movie out on Netflix called 'Moxie' which I love and 100% recommend you and your friends and your family all watch. (TW; mention of rape).
> 
> I'm also so sorry that Andrew's POVs are so short, I have no idea what his thought process is like when he's medicated so they're going to be short (but only for another chapter or two).


End file.
